Diminish
by Cassia21
Summary: A wrinkled piece of paper with Dean's handwriting, but scrawled and rushed, with the h unexpectedly jagged, as if he's been jogged, or writing on an uneven surface. It says: There is no hope.
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: The characters of Sherlock belong to Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. The characters of Supernatural belong to Eric Kripke. They do not belong to me. _

"John. I can tell something's troubling you."

A clock ticks in the background, slow and even and loud.

"Well. Yes. That's what this therapy's for, isn't it?" John Watson raps his cane against his foot lightly and stares at the ground.

A tut. "John…"

"Yes?" He coughs and tries to sound less aggressive. "Yes."

"Do you want to talk about it?" A silence. "Friends? Sherlock? I can't help you if you don't talk to me, John. Your family?"

"No – no, they're fine. Good. Harry has actually, uh, been trying to stop drinking. So that's…. that's… good. It's all… good." The quiet stretches out. "It's… sleeping."

"You're having difficulties with sleeping."

"Yes."

"What sort of difficulties?"

John sighs, heavily, and continues to examine the carpet fibre. And the voice says "John…" like she can't get enough of the name.

"Nightmares," he says finally.

"They're back?"

He rests his cane against the side of the chair. "Not… exactly." The silence waits. "They're different."

"What's different about them?"

"I – I've been having ni- bad dreams, but they're not… not the same. It's not the war anymore, not Afghanistan…. I'm not sure exactly what it is."

The therapist taps her pen. "Try and describe one of these dreams."

"Well…." He moved his gaze from the floor and glances around the room unseeingly. "It's just… flashes. Red. Black. Fire, lots of fire. It sounds ridiculous but I think…" he scoffs a little at himself. "I think I'm dreaming of Hell. The mediaeval 'fire and brimstone' kind, that is. It's not… anything I've experienced, no people, no anything. It's…. no, it's Hell. Just dreams of Hell, and no, I don't know why."

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Sam leans against a brick wall warmed by the summer heat and watches as Dean's face emerges from the depths of the opened car hood, smeared with grime and sweat.

He slams the hood down and brushes his shirt off, sending dust motes circling into the sun-choked air. Then he walks around the Impala again and stoops down to inspect a small dent in the side, shaking his head in despair. "Son of a bitch left a bullethole in my car."

"Dean," Sam says, but his brother ignores him.

They're outside crappy motel Number God Knows What and Sam would check them in if Dean wasn't holding all the fake credit cards in his pocket, apparently incapable of leaving his car.

Admittedly, there's no hurry. They're not exactly on a busy schedule, having had a grand total of zero cases in, like, two (or three? It's probably three) weeks. They're running low on conversation and gasoline and basically everything and it's weird.

He turns and stares at the motel. _The Rest_, it says, and there's a picture of a tipping hourglass next to it. Sam wonders if that's supposed to be clever.

"Dean."

The air is hot and still and stifling and Sam is bored. There's a somewhat lackadaisical bird trilling somewhere in the distance but other than that and Dean's mutterings, there's no sound.

Perhaps the boredom is a good thing. Isn't it kind of messed-up to live on the expectation that people are going to get murdered somewhere by supposedly mythical monsters? They should be able to just… be normal. For once.

"Dean."

His brother finally steps away from the Impala. "What?"

"Can we go in?"

"Sure." They crunch up the gravel path and Sam watches Dean with scientific interest. Dean catches this and frowns. "What?"

"Are you – are you limping?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "You hurt your leg or something? Maybe the muscle's tight."

"No, my muscles are – I'm not limping!"

"Walk on." Sam stops mid-step on the gravel.

Dean looks at him like he's crazy, but takes two even short steps. "You happy?"

"You were limping, like, a second ago." Sam says. He ponders. "You know, you should do stretches. Good for the muscles."

Dean shakes his head. "You're not funny, Sammy," he says as they enter _The Rest_.

He goes up to the counter where a stony-faced woman waits. On the wall above her there's a tasteless and worn-out painting of a raven. Everything about this motel screams tacky, but what else is new.

In the motel room there's silence. It's seriously weird. No panic, no anything. Sam's on edge for no reason whatsoever and Dean's lying on the quilt cover of his bed humming some stupid rock song under his breath. It smells sort of like barley.

The humming stops.

"Hey," says Dean to the ceiling. "Do you reckon they make foot-long burgers?" Oh god. Sam ignores him but his brother continues regardless. "How would they even make those? Is it still a burger if it's long?"

"Dean, a baguette. You're talking about a baguette."

"No," says Dean. "They don't have burger meat in baguettes."

Burger meat. Sam gives up.

And nothing happens and nothing happens and nothing happens and then there's a faint _whoosh_ of air sweeping through the room. Deans sits up as Castiel appears in the centre of the room. He looks tired and grim, so Sam assumes all is well.

"Hello Sam. Hello Dean," he says in his gravelly monotone.

"Hey, Cas," says Sam.

"What are you doing here?" says Dean. Because it would kill him to say hello first, it seems. Castiel shifts.

"Let me guess." Dean carries on. "A band of demons. Angelic Thugs trying to end the world?"

"Neither of those," says Castiel.

Dean frowns. "Then what? Leprechauns?"

Cas does the 'Are-We-Speaking-The-Same-Language' Head Tilt. "No," he says, and appears to struggle with himself for a moment. "I'm here because… the situation in Heaven is… bad. The fighting has stopped – for now. But it's very precarious, and certain angels would have me dead. For now it's best that I stay under the radar."

Dean opens his mouth and Sam shoots him a look before his brother says something idiotic. "So what you're saying," says Dean. "Is that you've got some time to kill."

The angel furrows his brow for a second. Sam imagines his mind scouring through centuries of human observation in a couple of seconds.

"Essentially… yes," he concludes.

There's a thump as Dean flops back down on the bed. "Pull up a chair then, and join the club."

Sam contemplates what Castiel has said about Heaven. "Is there anything we can do?" he asks. Or rather, blurts. "About Heaven, I mean."

"No, there's nothing." Castiel looks at him.

Do angels spend time learning to continually look like they're staring into the depths of everyone's soul, or is it just part of the 'Warrior of God' package?

"Okay, then…" Sam trails off, not sure where to take the conversation. "We could-"

He stops, because the angel has disappeared and left him with empty space. Dean sits up to see why his brother has cut himself off, and makes a face. "Freaking angels."

"Maybe something happened in Heaven."

"No," says a voice behind them. The other two both jump and look round. Cas has reappeared by the window. He's frowning. "It was not my… intention to leave."

"Where did you go?"

"I don't know," he says. "I did not have time to see my whereabouts."

"So you just… blipped?" says Dean. There's a beat of silence. "Cas?"

Castiel is staring into space in a decidedly vacant way. It would be funny, except it's Cas so it's not because angels don't blank out. He blinks. "Dean."

Outside, a truck drives down the quiet road, the roaring growing and making the walls of the motel room quiver, then receding, but the walls continue to shake almost imperceptibly.

Dean notices. He stands up and takes an uncertain step.

"Is that you?" he says to Cas, who doesn't reply. "Cas."

"Dean."

Sam is beginning to feel like a third party.

Castiel looks around like he's seeing the motel room for the first time, frowning harder than ever. "Is everything all right?" says Sam.

The walls stop vibrating. Castiel half raises a hand but then retracts it, and looks around again. "I… I shouldn't be here," he says distantly, sounding utterly perplexed.

"Heaven?" says Dean.

"No," says Cas. "It-" And on those conclusive words, he vanishes again.

Sam and Dean exchange a look.

"Well that was weird," says Dean.

"Think he'll come back?"

Dean does the casual shrug that he only does when he's pretending not to worry. "Could be smiting gremlins in Iceland for all I know." A moment of silence. "I'm taking a shower."

He heads to the bathroom, and as he does he starts to limp.

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It is the fifth time that Sherlock has woken from a dream of a man in a beige overcoat. He thinks it's a man, anyway – he only remembers blurs and flickers, like an image curling and blackening in a fire. Sherlock tries to grasp at details. Overcoat suggests businessman, stature suggests soldier….

He loses interest and sits up.

The room is dark since the blinds got stuck and he covered them with a poster of the Periodic Table that John didn't want over the TV, but his phone tells him it's 4:05pm.

He heads to the sitting-room. John's not there, probably gone to see his therapist because he's missed three appointments in a row and she's emailed him to ask about it, more than once.

Sherlock looks around at John's laptop (password ten letters, probably a medical term from the journal he's been reading recently which he thinks Sherlock won't notice and would therefore make a successfully obscure log-in), the Stradivarius on a pile of open books from the last case, the assorted scientific apparatus strewn across the kitchen counter.

Bored.

Nothing immediately grabs his attention so he stares out the window at the distant murmur of movement and traffic and city life, trying to read people (middle-aged woman going to meet someone, probably an affair, older woman who just visited a distant relative in hospital-), but his eyes keep leaping to to deceptive details: a beige jumper, a trench coat, a far-off figure disappearing in the midst of crowds, disappearing-

Sherlock has never been distracted by a dream before. They are meaningless reconfigurations of the day and therefore irrelevant.

John returns twenty-eight minutes later. His footsteps are uneven up the stairs, which means he's troubled. It's been a bad session at the therapist's.

He is now standing in the doorway, looking at Sherlock lying on the sofa looking at a book in his hand. There is a pause as the doctor leans his cane against the wall.

"I'm putting the kettle on," he says.

Patters have started against the windowpane, but there was no soft thump of John tossing a coat over the arm of a chair, so it's probably not cold. That mild kind of summer rain, then, likely the beginning of a storm.

Sherlock sits up because his arm has started to go numb and is now tingling unpleasantly.

"So," says John from the kitchen. "Solve any cases while I was gone?"

There's a squeak as the fridge door opens and closes again.

Sherlock sighs. "No. The criminals of London are losing their creativity, if Lestrade can solve the cases without me. Or perhaps he's acquired a few brain cells."

"Right." John re-emerges with two cups of tea, the faint steam spiralling up and fading away. The patters on the window are getting louder.

The consulting detective watches him as he settles in the armchair and picks up a half-read newspaper. His eyes are flicking randomly over the page, not taking anything in, just skimming.

A pause.

John looks up. "What are you reading?"

"The Bible."

John blinks and glances at the book to make sure Sherlock's not just trying to insult him in some way. Sherlock can see on his face that he's deciding whether or not to question this, whether he wants to know the answer. In the meantime, Sherlock takes a gulp of the tea. Almost scalding and not enough milk.

"Why?" John takes the plunge.

Sherlock picks up the Bible and flips through the pages. "Bored."

Dropping the book, he gets up and goes to the rain-streaked window again. There are fewer people now. Instead just a haze of umbrellas, black and grey and striped. And absolutely no beige overcoats.

After a few moments have passed he gets the sensation that John has said something. The silence manages to be expectant, anyhow. He combs back over his auditory memory but comes up blank. He turns. "What?"

John says whatever he was saying again but Sherlock still doesn't take it in, he's distracted by the way his flatmate is holding his arm, like there's something wrong with it. Stiffness, maybe. Maybe it's nothing.

"Do you ever wonder about Heaven, John?" He interrupts.

His flatmate looks inordinately surprised at the query. He's trying to cover it though, his face goes still and he blinks once or twice in that way he does when he's trying to process something.

"Did you-" he laughs. "Did you just ask a religious question?"

To be perfectly honest, Sherlock himself doesn't know why he asked. It's just an urge, a need to know. "I find it fascinating how common minds can take so much time to contemplate issues such as whether there is indeed, a 'Heaven' or a 'Hell,' when the answer should be completely clear that there can be no such thing. I was wondering if you would, for once, enlighten me."

John opens his mouth, closes it again and takes a sip of tea with his right arm.

"Well," he says finally. "Haven't you ever wondered?"

"No." Sherlock sits down at the desk and checks his phone. Nothing from Lestrade. He looks up and sees John watching him. "Oh god," he says. "Don't tell me you believe in an afterlife."

"Well," John says. He has a knack for starting every other sentence with a vaguely reproving '_well_.' "I don't know. It's nice to think though, isn't it? That there might be."

"That there might be a Hell?" Sherlock scoffs. "No."

He turns to the laptop, but he can feel John's eyes on him longer than usual, somewhat questioningly, and he puts it down to the surprise of a religion-oriented conversation.

"What's wrong with your arm?" says Sherlock.

"What?"

"You've been favouring your right arm more than usual since you arrived."

John flexes his left arm. "Feels like my shoulder's burning. Must have wrenched it."

Sherlock loses interest, but he still feels restless and bored and as if there is something he should be doing but he can't pinpoint what. So he goes to the window for a third time and watches the world.

He won't admit to himself that he's searching, yet he can't help but notice that the streets are emptying and shining with rain and the sky is dust grey, and there is absolutely nobody wearing a beige overcoat.

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There is something wrong with Dean.

Not that there is isn't usually, but this time it's different. Sam's actually a bit concerned, if not outright freaked.

It's been a day since Cas dropped by and left (or, as Dean put it, 'blipped out') without a warning. Sam hasn't mentioned it since, but he's caught Dean pausing and glancing around as if expecting to the angel to suddenly manifest again. Which wasn't too crazy, since it was Castiel and that guy did have a tendency to just… pop out of nowhere.

That's not what's worrying Sam.

During the past day, they've mainly been hanging around the motel room, searching online for news that could be up their street, but nothing. It's like the world's dead to them, unresponsive as a corpse…. Wait. Sam pauses and wonders when their similes had got so messed-up.

Anyway, that's not what's worrying him.

Half an hour ago, Dean arose from the bed with so much difficulty you'd think Dracula himself was dragging himself out of a hundred-year-old coffin with stiff limbs.

"'M going into town to get supplies," he had declared, which in the Dean-to-World Translator means _I'm going to get a load of beer_, because Sam got actual supplies earlier that day and it's starting to get dark outside anyway. "And a pie."

Five minutes ago he had returned, but not… not…

Sam watches his brother warily as he settles himself by the blackening window – limping, Sam isn't sure he wants to know what that's about - and leans against the floral pattern wallpaper that has a smattering of dubious stains, with a contented look. He's even humming a bit under his breath.

"Dean," Sam begins. "Are you…. alright?" He keeps an eye on the laptop screen so as to look casual, although it's only showing the desktop.

"Mmm? Oh yes, yes I'm fine. Splendid." Dean gives him a kindly smile.

Splendid. Right. Sam stares at the start-up menu for a few more moments, glancing up his brother at intervals. Finally he turns and sets the laptop down on the bed.

"Can I – can I just ask?" he says.

"Ye-es?"

Sam clears his throat awkwardly. "Why are you drinking a cup of tea?"

Dean looks at him uncomprehendingly, then his gaze moves down to the cup and saucer in his hand. There's a split-second of silence and his brother suddenly swears, drops the tea as if it were a snake.

The saucer lands with a thud and rolls away, and the cup tips, letting brown liquid seep out and into the grimy carpet. Just another stain to add to the collection in this room, Sam thinks.

Dean's eyebrows are rapidly traversing up his forehead.

"Dude, what the hell?" he says, staring from his hands to the damp carpet and back.

Perhaps this is it, this is when his brother finally loses his last grain of sanity and tries to marry his Impala and the locals will start calling him 'The Mad Car Man' and children will make it a game on Halloween to try and put a pencil in his overgrown beard…

What? Sam refocuses.

Dean fixes his gaze on him. "Dude," he says, and indicates the cup and saucer with excessively dramatic arm movements to punctuate each word. "What. The. Hell?"

Sam shrugs. "I don't know, Dean, you tell me."

He leans to fish the offending dishware from the ground before Dean steps on one of them as he starts to pace back and forth.

"I went out for beer," he says.

"Uh, yeah."

"That is not beer!"

"You mean you didn't decide to get tea instead?" Where the hell did he even get tea _from_?

"How can you even ask that?" says Dean, as if Sam is suggesting that his brother has taken up romantic poetry. "No!"

The pacing gets more agitated, and he starts to lean a little on one side, favouring one leg over the other.

"Dean, you're-"

His brother jumps as if only just aware of his presence, and spins round to face him. "What? Did you – what did you just call me?"

Sam pauses. "Uh, what?"

"Did you just call me-" He stops himself and paces a bit more. "What?"

"…What?"

"What?"

Okay, well that's not getting them anywhere. Sam gets up cautiously, as if his brother is a grenade who might explode at any moment. "Dean, what's happening?"

Dean jolts again. His face is a strange shade of grey. "There! You did it again!"

"Did what?" says Sam, throwing up his arms helplessly.

"Called me J-"

"Hello Dean. Hello Sam."

This time Sam is the one jumps at the unexpected low voice behind him. Thank God for good timing. He turns. "Cas!"

The angel looks tired, more dishevelled than usual and his face is dark – but maybe Sam's just making stuff up now. He's pretty weirded out as it is.

"Cas, what happened?" asks Sam. "You just disappeared on us yesterday."

"Yeah, did you get beamed up to Heaven or something?" says Dean. Whatever the deal with the tea is, it's briefly forgotten.

Castiel grimaces. He seems vaguely distracted in the way he looks around the room. "No."

A pause.

"You wanna elaborate?" says Dean. His face is resuming its normal shade.

The angel appears to contemplate this question. "No."

Okay then.

Nobody seems very sure how to proceed after that, and a silence falls in the room to mirror the night falling outside. Sam watches Cas. If he didn't know better he would say the guy is disorientated. His eyebrows are drawn together more than usual, and he seems to be looking inwards rather than paying attention to the other two.

Sam looks from the angel to the still-damp stain on the carpet that isn't clearing up, and thinks of Dean's leg. Something is seriously screwed up here.

And as if confirm his hypothesis, Castiel sways and starts to keel over.

"Whoa, whoa whoa, Cas-" Sam goes to catch him, but the man is toppling too fast and they end up in an awkward half-collapsed tangle against the edge of the bed, Sam's arm stuck uncomfortably around Castiel's elbow.

Extricating himself from the sudden mass of trench coat on him, Sam manages to lug Castiel onto the bed with Dean's assistance, where he lies still in a sprawled mess, one arm dangling over the edge of the mattress.

"Is he hurt?" says Dean, looking as perplexed as Sam feels.

Sam shakes his head. "I don't – I don't know."

Either way, they peel off his coat and check for bloodstains or cracked bones, check his heartbeat and check he's breathing (although neither of them knows whether angels need to breathe anyway) and find nothing. Sam isn't sure if that's good or bad, because it means they still don't have a clue what's wrong with the guy.

Dean stands back and stares at Castiel. "Angels don't just pass out, Sammy."

"Wait…" Sam observes the angel's haggard appearance and a strange, and not entirely reassuring thought comes to him. "Actually, I think he's just…. asleep."

A beat of silence.

"Angels don't just _fall asleep_, Sam!"

"Well, I don't know."

A pensive silence follows this. They both watch the faint rise and fall of Castiel's chest. Maybe they should try and wake him up – he might be falling into some kind of divine coma or something. Could angels do that? Sam makes a mental note to start asking the guy about these things. Could come in useful someday.

Sam moves forward cautiously. "Cas?" he says. Then, louder: "Castiel!"

Nothing happens. His brother watches as if severely doubting his sanity, though he's in no position to judge so he can just shut up. Wondering if he's committing an obscure form of blasphemy, Sam shakes Cas a little. Still nothing.

He steps back with a sigh. "Dean."

"What?"

The response is so unexpectedly frantic that Sam jumps. "What?"

"My. Name. Is. Dean," says Dean. His eyebrows have rocketed back up his forehead.

"Uh. Yeah." Sam decides that now is not the time for this. "You try."

"To wake him?" Dean looks vaguely scandalised. "Dude, maybe we should just let him sleep. He looks kind of peaky."

"We have to find out what's wrong with him-" Just in time, Sam swallows back Dean's name in case he triggers this weird hang-up about it now. Of all the things… "So tap into your _profound bond_ and wake him."

Dean inelegantly kicks the bed, which makes the mattress springs squeak, but that's it.

He frowns down at Castiel. "Wake up already. I don't need a holy tax accountant taking up my bed, I'm not sleeping on the floor for you." This is a lie. He would.

They wait expectantly.

"Maybe if I play a ringtone loud enough-" Sam's hand is sliding into his denim pocket as Castiel's eyes open and he sort of… _sputters_ awake.

"Cas!" Apropos of nothing, the angel has gone from silent and prone, to bursting into action so suddenly that he doesn't so much get off the bed as roll, with a touch of panicked flailing. There is a loud flurry of movement as he barely manages to land on his feet, and fights for balance for a precarious second.

"Oh." With a slow blink, Castiel begins to rearrange his coat, ignoring the brothers' exclamations and attempts to get him to sit. His hair is askew, which does nothing for his still-haggard appearance.

"What was that all about?" says Dean, poised to catch the guy if he feels an urge to be horizontal again.

"I have returned." Cas looks at them as if he wants them to confirm this. He seems surprised.

_Returned_ is not exactly how Sam would have put it, but oh well.

Dean laughs uncertainly. "Cas, you never left."

The motel room smells of cigarette smoke. This detail hits Sam out of the blue. Why this should suddenly be drawn to his attention, he has no clue: you find all kinds of crap in motel rooms and residue cigarette butts would not be the worst they've found, but once he's noticed the smell he finds he can't ignore it.

"No…" Cas frowns. "I was in London."

There's a pause where Dean appears to be struggling to make some sort of inane pun or joke about this, but the angel's declaration so unexpected that he just goes: "Uh, sorry to break your bubble, but you didn't leave the bed."

Sam thinks about how he really wants to open a window.

Cas looks as if he's concentrating hard. He shakes his head slightly and the room gets a tad bit colder, something Sam has learnt to associate with the angel's departure. The teacup on the bedside table rattles a bit, or perhaps that's just his imagination.

"Something's wrong," says Cas, lapel inside-out. A faint wind starts.

Dean moves in front of Castiel, apparently also sensing his imminent departure. "Wait, wait, stop. Just stop a minute, alright?"

After a few seconds of what Sam has termed 'deep-soul-searching-gazing-thing', the room is still again and the normal temperature is resumed.

"Okay." Dean relaxes and moves back. "What's the matter with you, Cas? You've been acting kind of weird lately."

This is pretty hypocritical. Sam forgets the cigarette smoke. "Dean, you've been acting pretty weird too."

Dean looks at him uncomprehendingly and turns back, disregarding the comment as some sort of joke. There's something about it – the lack of recognition, maybe, as if he's already forgotten the deal with the tea and the limp – that kind of scares Sam.

But maybe he's just being ridiculous and it's nothing and he's being, as Dean would say, a 'Samantha.' Still, the doubt lingers in his mind like an itch he can't ignore.

"Something's wrong," says Castiel again, his voice getting rougher and deeper as it does when he's thinking hard.

Dean gestures for him to continue. "You wanna enlighten us?"

A grimace. "I was in London," says Cas. "But I wasn't in it. I was… in some abstract concept of London from the imaginings of a civilian." He must see from their faces that he's lost them, because he sighs. "I was in someone's dream."

"Someone was dreaming about you?" says Sam.

"Not exactly." A pause as Cas seems to try and find the words to explain to their simple, mortal minds. Or something. "If that were the case, it would not physically affect me. I was pulled into their dream. What I don't know is how."

Dean visibly processes this information. "Do you know whose dream it was?"

Cas shakes his head. "I was not there long enough."

This leads to a brief dead end in the conversation, because it's clear none of them have encountered something like this before.

"So now what?" says Dean. "I mean, is this normal? Should we do something?"

"I have not heard of this happening before."

"London." Dean says it like he's having an epiphany. "London, London, London."

The other two wait for some enlightening statement to follow, but none does. The hunter continues to mutter 'London, London' under his breath like some sort of chant. Sam wants to intervene but saying Dean's name might make it worse.

He exchanges a glance with the angel. Castiel is doing his confused-squinty-eye thing, at first, but then he moves towards Sam's brother and does the Head Tilt and stares in the 'soul-searching-gazing-thing' way. Dean isn't reciprocating.

It seems for a second that Cas recognises something, or has a realisation, and Sam waits. Dean has quietened. "What is it?" says Sam.

A sigh. "Something's wrong," Cas tells him, which is getting to be pretty old news by now.

"Yeah," says Sam, repressing an urge to bash his head against the wall. "What?"

It's pretty dark in the room now, they should really turn another light on to support the dim orange glow from the bedside lamp in the far corner, struggling to extinguish the shadows. Castiel's features are thrown into darkness and it only serves to make the whole situation more unsettling.

"Dean," says the angel with that insufferable profound calm. "Is not… Dean."

And the room fills with a faint and brief breeze which wafts the smell of cigarettes around, and the 'holy tax accountant' is gone, leaving Sam and Dean in the dying light.

Dean looks worried. "I'm not me?" He looks down at himself, checkered-shirt-denim-jeans, classic Dean all over. "I feel like me."

He shoves his hand in his pockets in order to begin his worried pacing again, but instead stops. He pulls out something and opens his fist to reveal a crumpled strip of paper, tattered as if a page torn from a notebook in a hurry.

They exchange a look.

"What is it?" says Sam. By which he means 'what now?'

Dean hands it to him and Sam goes to turn on the other light to alleviate the gloom. The motel room floods with pale yellow-whiteness. He looks down at his hand.

There, in Dean's handwriting, it says:

_Hope. _

"What-" Sam begins to say, but when he looks up his brother is pulling something else out of his pocket, another freaking piece of paper, wrinkled and greyish, straightening it out and frowning down at the writing.

Sam reaches it for it. Dean's handwriting, again, but scrawled and rushed, with the h unexpectedly jagged, as if he's been jogged, or writing on an uneven surface.

_There is no hope._


	2. Chapter 2

"Pass the salt."

Sherlock doesn't look up from his microscope, and thus the command is directed at the glass slide below him. John will be there – if not right now, then eventually – so it seems a waste of energy to make the extra effort of getting up himself.

As it happens, his flatmate _is _there as a voice replies. "Why?"

John does not usually question him. Sherlock raises his head from the science equipment and says "This experiment," somewhat absently, as the observations are mounting up in his mind.

A phone on the table reads _07:16 AM, _screen reflecting the white kitchen ceiling. John's face is set in a grim expression, mouth tight and brow furrowed, wrinkles more pronounced than usual, dark bags under eyes suggesting at least three nights' bad sleep, concurrent with his restarted trips to the therapist, indicating that one has _caused _the other, most likely the sleep causing the trips, so there is some new stress in the doctor's life-

_Faster. _Sherlock's mind is not cold and logical, it is a blazing whirr of information.

-A faint line of steam rises from the kettle and a sense of dampness is pervading the air – looking downwards – dark stains on the hems of John's trouser legs and mud-water residue along the edges of his shoes and marks on the floor where he stepped means he went out for a walk earlier this morning to clear his mind - also means it rained last night but this is fact is irrelevant and –

"Why don't you get the salt?" John looks jumpy. He's leaning heavily on his cane.

"You're closer. It's behind you."

Still the man doesn't move. "I think we should save it."

"What on earth for?"

Sherlock has lost interest in the experiment by now, but take care not to show it. He was only completing a disregarded one from long ago as an attempt at a distraction. (He's still having the recurring dreams, of overcoats and a strange man whom he never manages to see the face of).

"Well. You know," John throws a deliberately careless arm about. "Food. Chips. Normal things." He retracts the arm in order to massage his left shoulder. "I'm just saying, maybe we should be more conservative with things. These things – food and salt and everything – they cost money, you know. _My _money! Perhaps _you _could do the grocery shopping now and then."

Sherlock gets up and moves to the sitting-room, shoes squeaking on the kitchen tiled floor and then suddenly muted by carpet.

"Sherlock, are you even listening to me?"

The room is bright with morning sunlight, everything starkly clear, down to the layers of dust on the bookshelves. Picking up his Stradivarius, Sherlock flops down onto the sofa and is stopped when his back encounters something solid and bulky.

He extracts the object. It is the Bible from the other day, open at a random page, now crinkled from impact with the consulting detective.

'_For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand? 7. 144,000 Sealed. After this I saw four…" _

That is the moment John chooses to enter.

"I take it Lestrade hasn't called, going from the frosted ear in the box," he's saying.

"No."

John spots the book Sherlock is holding and stills very subtly, as if every muscle has tightened beneath his green-grey jumper. It is a strange reaction. Maybe Sherlock should comment – but he has been reprimanded before for 'intrusive' observations.

"You're still thinking about Heaven and – and Hell, then." John adopts a veneer of calm. Why should it be a veneer?

"Um, _no._"The consulting detective tosses aside the tome. "I'm not 'interested' in anything. The crimes are dull, the _world… _is dull. There is nothing of interest to me anywhere. In the world."

(Perhaps the relentless boredom is the reason his mind keeps dwelling on insignificant dreams).

"You could update your blog," John suggests, ever constructive.

Sherlock has done this. He has also hacked John's laptop. He's also reread his blog posts of their cases, not to mention reading a stream of texts on his mobile from a drunken Harry claiming that the world had forgotten her so she'll forget John too if _that's_ what he wants, but Sherlock decides it would be unwise to mention this to the doctor.

"Or you could go outside. When was the last time you left the flat? Be good for you, a bit of fresh air." John pauses to yawn. "Heard anything from Mycroft?"

That doesn't dignify a response. John gives up and leaves the room.

The leather of the sofa squeals as Sherlock budges to reach for his gun. He's turning the safety off when his flatmate's disembodied voice shouts "And don't start shooting the wall!"

Boring. The gun drops to his side, warming the longer he holds it. Boring boring bored.

Time passes. Or at least, Sherlock hopes it does because nothing much seems to be changing as he lies there staring at the broken-plaster ceiling.

There's a distant creak as somebody walks up the stairs and knocks on the door behind him, regardless of the fact it is wide open. Going by the artificial rose perfume and the slightly tentative knocks (Mycroft taps the door with his ridiculous umbrella, Lestrade doesn't knock at all, and that's about it for recurring visitors), it's Mrs Hudson.

"Come in," says Sherlock.

"I – oh!" She starts at seeing him with the gun, then tuts. "You'd better not be ruining the walls, Sherlock, it's seven in the morning. People are _sleeping._"

John re-emerged from the kitchen with his cane. "Hello, Mrs Hudson."

"What is it, Mrs Hudson?" Sherlock says. He lifts the gun (the landlady flinches) and rests it on the table.

"_Well,_" she says. "I was making my morning cup of coffee when I looked out of the window and I noticed that there's this man in the street, he seems to be lost or waiting, but he keeps looking at our door, so I thought maybe he's someone you know, but I'd better come and ask before-"

In one movement, Sherlock leaps from the sofa and rushes to his landlady, clutching her arms. John raises his eyebrows.

"What did this man look like?" Sherlock says.

"Oh gosh, I don't remember, he-"

"It's _important, _Mrs Hudson! Think!"

She wrings her hands a little. "He's quite formally dressed-"

At that, he moves her to the side and races down the stairs, almost falling which he's never done before. It's irrational, it's so _irrational-_

Undoing the latch, he all but flings open the front door. It is humid suddenly, and the air feels thick. There is a figure across the street, nearly stepping into a puddle as he fidgets indecisively.

Sherlock's adrenaline pours away in an instant. It is the man, of course it isn't.

A rustling indicates that the other two have come up behind him. John appears at his side.

Despite his disappointment, Sherlock walks down and across the gleaming tarmac. The man _(late fifties, marketing industry, divorced, a smoker) _is nobody.

"Can I help you?" Sherlock says.

"Oh! No…" The man gives a sheepish smile. "I'm looking for my cousin's house and I thought it was here but now I see I got the number-"

Boring. Sherlock turns around and leaves the man mid-sentence. He closes the door of 221B and returns to the flat. With a loud sigh, John trails up behind him.

"What was that about?" says John.

Sherlock frowns, as if John is stupid for asking. "Nothing." He walks over to the window and watches the marketing salesman amble down the road, past a woman on her phone and a man in a beige–

"Sherlock!" But he's halfway down the stairs again, and Mrs Hudson's saying "All this _rushing _up and down, I don't know-"

He barrels down the street, heedless of people's indignant exclamations and the roar of traffic and the blinding shine of the clouds off the buildings, down to the corner, but the man's moved, and looking round he sees the corner of an overcoat walking past a coach and pursues it, getting closer…

Whereupon the coach door opens and starts unloading a heavy stream of Asian tourists, cameras held aloft among a throng of excited chatter.

The man is disappearing, getting further away. Sherlock gives a low noise of frustration and forcibly pushes two girls out of his way, struggling around them, but there's too many milling around.

"Wait!" he says for no real reason, the distance too great for him to be heard.

Even so, the man, _the _man in the overcoat, a familiar stranger, stops in the centre of the pavement and turns. Though his features are indistinct by distance, it seems to Sherlock that he sees him. The detective stares and the man stares back, head tilting slightly.

And then he is gone, and Sherlock's being shouted at by an angry Japanese woman, and his socks are cold and squelch in his shoes.

"Oh, don't mind me, I'm Sherlock _Holmes, _and I can run off whenever I want to and leave someone else to fetch the keys…" John has caught up, edging around the dissipating crowd.

"John." Sherlock takes a few steps towards where the man had vanished, squinting against the harsh cloud-light. London. Just London around him and nothing more.

"Sherlock…? Sherlock, what is it?"

The younger man turns and briefly meets the eyes of John Watson. "I think I'm going mad."

The doctor hesitates. "Only just noticed?" He is sweating in his jumper, face gaining a shine. He observes Sherlock. "Come on – come back to the flat."

"There was a man, another man I've been seeing…"

There's a sudden gasp to his right. Both men turn. A woman, dressed to all intents and purposes as a human pomegranate, judging by the shade of her dress. She colours when they look at her, serving to complete the resemblance.

"Sorry-" She starts to bustle off but pauses to wink at Sherlock. "He's a keeper."

"We're not…" John cuts himself off and sighs. "Are you coming?"

Back in the flat, Sherlock is torn between staying at the window like a daytime vigilante, and the knowledge that doing so would be irrational and would be to let his brain stagnate and get stuck on a loop. "Have you noticed something, John?"

"What?"

"These last few days, even weeks, have been remarkably similar. The weather – the same. No cases, no new news. The same arguments, you and I. As if we're stuck."

"So we're on the Truman show now?"

Sherlock stares. "What?"

"Never mind." John massages his right shoulder. "This is life, Sherlock. Most people _don't _battle criminal masterminds to stay entertained."

Drumming his fingers on the windowsill, Sherlock muses on the concept of normal. "Life has a pattern."

"Yes!" John checks the mantelpiece and then his pocket for the house keys. "Get up, do your job, go to sleep. I've got up, and now…" He disappears down the stairs. "I'm going to do my job." He is gone.

Sherlock waits.

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It is, Sam thinks, a bit of overkill.

Not that he should point that out to Dean, whose eyes are so wide he looks like a freaking owl.

"Okay." He shifts gingerly and swings his feet over the side of the bed. "Don't freak out."

"Freak _out?_"

The room – well, the space between their beds, and all over Dean's covers, and his bedside table – is full of paper. Sam's (_new) _notebook has practically been shredded, small slivers in places and a whole bunch of pages crumpled up in others. And, just like last night, every last scrap has got Dean's muddled scrawl on it: mainly one or two words, but Sam sees a sentence here and there.

He picks one up and carefully un-scrunches it. Dean does the same.

_No hope. _

Dean looks around again. There's a measured pause. "I didn't write these."

"Dude, you kind of did." Sam glances at the paper and at his brother and thinks: _Dean is not Dean?_

"Do they all say the same?"

For the next five minutes the room is filled with the crackling and crinkling of balls of paper being unrolled, again and again.

_No hope_

_There is no hope_

_No hope_

_Hope_

_There is no hope no hope_

_Without. _Sam puts this one to the side.

_There can be no hope._

_Hope._

"This one's different." Dean holds it up to the light. "'son there is.' That mean anything to you? And one here says 'Without J.'"

Sam bends to check under the bed for any extra scraps of paper. "Check your pockets," he says, straightening up as he lifts his pillow.

Dean gives him a What-Are-We-Smoking Look, but does so. He pulls out one piece from his denim pocket and frowns at it, before passing it to Sam.

_ohn Wat_

There's a moment of flummoxed silence.

"On what?" says Sam, mystified. "On _what?" _The penny drops, slowly. "Dean – the pieces, they must match up. Make a sentence."

He clears a space on the bedside table.

_No hope_

_There is no hope_

_ohn Wat_

_Without J_

_son there is _

_Without J – ohn Wat – son there is – no hope_

_Without John Watson there is no hope._

"John Watson?" says Dean. "Who's that?"

Sam blinks. "You don't know? Dean, you _wrote _this."

"I didn't write _this._" His brother gestures around.

"Well, _I _don't know."

Sam thinks _he wrote it but he didn't write it. Dean is not Dean. _

"You could have written them in your sleep," Sam suggests. "Like sleep-walking."

"Yeah, but sleep-_writing? _I don't even sleep-talk, why would I suddenly want to write?" A cloud passes outside and blocks part of the light streaming in around the edges of the crappy blinds. "Maybe it wasn't me, just someone who wanted to leave a message."

Yeah. Right. "It's your _handwriting._" Sam gives Dean a look and pushes some of the paper on the ground into a careful pile.

"You're saying I'm possessed?" Dean shoves the scraps off his bed so they flutter onto the floor. "Sam, I would know if some demon or whatever decided to crash out in my brain."

Somehow Sam is not reassured. He fiddles with a piece in his hand which says _No hope, _turning it over and over until the creases are worn smooth. "Do you remember waking up at all? During the night?"

"Just in case you didn't hear me the first time… I didn't write this." Dean attempts to seem annoyed but it fails. He's worried. Scared, even. "I don't… remember writing all this."

He's not looking at Sam but Sam's looking at him, wondering if he should ask him if he's okay. (He sure as hell isn't okay but addressing the issue directly has never been the Winchester way).

Apparently having recovered from his initial shock, his brother stretches out and heads to the bathroom. "First thing's first – I'm having a shower. Then we'll find this 'John Watson' guy." A shadow crosses his face.

"But Dean, we don't even know if he's a real-" The bathroom door shuts and the reverberation travels through the floor.

It smells of cigarettes again, smoky and sharp. They should really invest in air spray.

Sam runs a hand over his face and sighs. Then he heads over to the table, where he starts up his laptop. He doesn't know what the hell's wrong with Dean and it's freaking him out. John Watson, who is that? A prophet? Or what – a figment of Dean's fragmented subconscious?

He types the name into search and goes to open the window to wash out the nicotine smell, but there's no wind and the scent hangs in the room, as if contained.

When Dean emerges from the bathroom he's favouring one leg, very slightly. "Find anything?"

Sam gives a little huff of frustration. "Dean, there's probably hundreds of people with that name. It's not much to go on."

"Oh okay, I'll just take a nap and see if I can summon up a zip code to go with it."

There are many words to describe his brother's wit, and sparkling is not one of them.

"Maybe we should-" _call Cas, _Sam was going to say, but the angel's been pretty out of whack too. He runs a hand through his hair. "What does it even mean, 'without this guy there's no hope'?"

His brother's watching him but this time Sam's not looking at him. The first breeze rattles the blinds. "You think it's the apocalypse?"

Sam shrugs.

Going over to the bed, Dean stares at their makeshift sentence arranged on the bedside table for a long moment. "Could just be some kind of _really _melodramatic…. calling card?"

"Yeah, that _you _wrote." Worry gnaws at Sam's stomach as he turns back to the screen, glancing up at Dean intermittently.

"Dude, stop looking at me like I'm dying," says Dean. "I'm fine." It comes out a little too forcefully. "Fine. Just… keep searching."

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Sherlock's phone reads 01:42pm and he has no plans for lunch when he casually saunters past the window for the thirty-eighth time.

He thinks he might be going mad. He's not himself. He's been seeing The Man all morning, in his mind: when he shuts his eyes, in the mirror just as he's turning away, the sense of being watched – though that may just be Mycroft's 'secret' surveillance. He's acting like some kind of jilted lover over a stranger who may or may not exist.

He allows himself to look through the windowpanes, through his own reflection. He freezes as a rush of excitement surges through him to rival any drug.

He's there, The man is there, that strange man, outside 221B with a puzzled expression.

As if sensing Sherlock, his gaze rises and trails up over the door and bricks to the window and he meets the eyes of the detective.

Sherlock snaps into action. He sprints for the stairs (_again) _and to the front door, flings it open as before and –

The man is gone. _Again. _

Excitement ebbs away, replaces by the much less pleasant _fear, _twisting around his chest and windpipe. Can it be that he, Sherlock Holmes, is losing his sanity, the calculated and clear logic he depends on? Him… hallucinating his dreams into real life?

The street and air and sky are still and peaceful as Sherlock gets thrown into an unsettling kind of chaos.

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Sam rests his head in his hands with a small groan. It's been four hours, and Dean has phoned six John Watsons, only to rule them out as unlikely heroes, including Watson, the Pennsylvanian farmer, 'Johnny' the investment banker in Ohio, and a two-year-old boy whose parents had threatened to come after Dean with a variety of kitchen utensils.

Dean is sat with the chair tilted back, throwing the phone in the air and catching it again thoughtfully. He sits up.

"'M gonna get lunch," he says, and all but leaps for the door. Sam listens to the door snap shut and footfalls getting further away, and then leans back.

"So, uh… Castiel, could use some help here. We're looking for a guy who might help Dean, I don't know. It's really weird. So if you fancy coming down, man, that'd be great. You know, if you can."

A cool wind sweeps through the room but the blinds don't move. "Hello Sam."

Sam twists round, almost unbalancing the chair. "Cas!" Dammit, why does he always sound so surprised?

The angel looks tired, as before. His whole face seems darker, but he's not worse. Not visibly, anyway. Is that good? Or is he hiding stuff with his mojo? Sam can never tell with Cas.

Maybe he's getting a bit paranoid.

"Castiel," says Sam again. "Uh, hi, listen, do you-"

"You need to go to London." The man takes a step towards the window and turns to fix Sam with a Look.

"What? Is that… Dean… why?"

"You have been noticing Dean's erratic behaviour."

"Well, yeah. In fact –" Sam goes to show Cas some of the pieces of paper but the angel doesn't seem interested. Maybe he already knows, or guessed. "This guy called John Watson-"

"It's unclear what the source is, but something's happening in London that's affecting Dean." A pause. "And me."

"Is it… is it dangerous?"

"I don't know."

"Right. So… what do we do?" In the back of his mind, Sam noticed how he always sounds so brainless around Cas. It's kinda intimidating, talking to an ancient celestial being. Not that it bothers Dean. (Dean says he has a crush on knowledge, because 'you always act like a damn girl in a library'. No doubt something similar applies here).

"We need to go. Where's Dean?"

"He went out to get lunch."

Cas gives a frown – no, not even that, just a crinkling of the brow – which somehow manages to convey mixed fascination and exasperation at the mundane aspects of humanity.

A silence descends. And yeah, it's a bit awkward. Sam attempts to send his brother a telepathic message telling him to _hurry the hell up. _Crap, maybe something happened, maybe Dean's been brain-hacked and is searching the city for scones and jam.

"Why would he do that?" says Cas.

Sam blinks. "Uh, Cas, it's kinda creepy when someone listens to your thoughts."

"It is… socially inappropriate," says Cas slowly, as if repeating a phrase someone taught him. Probably Dean. He went through phases of trying to 'domesticate' the guy.

"…Yeah, I guess you could say that."

Castiel considers this. "My apologies." Then there's the Look again. "Sam, your intellect and knowledge are far greater than I would have expected from someone such as yourself."

"Uh, okay, thanks I guess." A pause. Sam tries not to think too loudly and then feels like an idiot for it. "So how are things? In Heaven, that is – And with you."

"Delicate." His shoulders drop slightly. Sam is about to pass this off as the angel's typical brusqueness, but catches a glance at the guy's drawn face. Maybe it's difficult subject for him, Sam realises. He sure as hell wouldn't feel great about having to avoid his own home.

"Hey Cas, you know, if you ever want to talk-"

The door opens. "Alright sasquatch, I've got two Mega Burgers with extra barbeque sauce and your precious Samantha salad because I – Cas!" Dean drops the heap of food on the table by Sam's laptop. Sam gets hit by the waft of junk food and… that is _not _beef. "What are you doing here?"

"Hello Dean," says Cas. "We have to go to London."

He raises his arms to their foreheads but Dean swerves out of the way. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, now? Like right now? Can I at least have lunch first?"

Sam notices that he isn't questioning the need to go, or the location.

Without waiting for an answer, Dean picks up a burger. "So this John Watson guy lives in London?" He munches. "Figures."

"What do you mean, 'figures'?" says Sam.

Dean swallows and stares at him. "What?"

Oh, Jesus. If Sam wasn't so damn worried, he'd find the whole situation plain infuriating.

After another bite, Dean looks up. Cas is waiting and seems as close to impatience as his facial muscles appear to allow, and Sam is likewise staring at his brother.

Dean tosses the burger back onto the wrapper with some regret and wipes the grease off his fingers. "Okay, chill guys. You can beam me up, Scotty." He stands.

Cas frowns. "It means he's ready," Sam supplies. Dean rolls his eyes.

Moving towards them, the angel reaches to their foreheads and Sam-

_(a thousand-mile split-second rushing like a flash in the sky) _

"-was like, _oh my days, _you _cannot _be serious, but then I spoke to Nick, yeah? And he said it was, so…"

For a few seconds the sense of disorientation is so great that Sam can't make sense of his surroundings. His head is spinning, bile rising in his throat, some woman is shrieking into a cell phone and there's a pervasive smell of Indian takeaway.

He blinks hard several times, and the world begins to settle into place.

"_Dude_," says Dean to convey his awe.

They're in an alley in – well, _London, _apparently, amongst some grimy rubbish bags behind a deli. The woman with the cell phone fades away as she steps out of the alley into some bustling street.

"This is London?" says Sam, as if somehow Cas could have made halfway stop in Helsinki. It's humid without being hot, and already Sam's shirt begins to stick unpleasantly to his skin.

Castiel seems preoccupied. "Yes."

"Well. I'd thank you for the ride," says Dean. "Except I think my stomach just ruptured."

The angel tilts his head and says: "You are physically well, Dean," which prompts an eyeroll from the hunter.

"Okay, so now what?" Dean starts peering around the alley, hunter-style.

Sam realises they have no guns, no weapons, not even any money except two dollars which is about as useful as…as… something not very useful. Maybe they were kind of hasty in coming here. But Cas can get anything we need, Sam reminds himself.

Cas frowns. He's doing that a lot recently. Frowning. "This is not where I intended to land. We are… some streets away." He circles as if employing some internal radar.

"From what? You mean you know _exactly _where this guy is?"

The back foor of the deli swings open and there's a snatch of a shouting, sizzling and a gust of Indian-food air. A small girl watches them with wide brown eyes, half-obscured, and then the door shuts again.

Sam feels, irrationally, a prickling of fear which grabs him in a rush and then slowly abates.

"Follow me," says Cas, and strides out of the alley into the – _sweet Jesus _that's a busy street.

Dean and Sam struggle to keep track of the angel as he blends into the massive wave of people and noise and colours they just got hit with. It's so… _British: _there's a tall guy with messy hair and a shorter friend leaping into a freaking cab, and Dean's now fangirling over a postbox ("Hey, check it out, it's red and… is that a _doubledecker _– sorry, sorry, 'scuse me-").

Meanwhile, the holy tax accountant – Sam hopes it's still Cas and they haven't started trailing a random businessman, anyhow – is steaming ahead.

A while later they stop, under a sign that reads _Baker Street. _It's quieter, a few cars parked a cab just rumbling off. Cas looks as if he's concentrating, raking over the tall brick buildings. More worryingly, _Dean _is doing the same, but with more confused blinking, half-attempted gesticulations and a confounded expression.

"Dean?" says Sam. He rolls up his shirt sleeves. Gotta let the pores breathe.

"I know this place," says Dean in a rush. He sounds like he's on drugs.

Sam raises his eyebrows. "What do you mean? You saw it on TV or something, right? Dean?...Cas? Castiel?...Guys?"

His brother visibly and suddenly relaxes, like Play pressed on a DVD remote. "Dude, I've got some freaky déjà vu. Check it out – goosebumps." He sticks his arm in Sam's face. What the hell? Sam can _feel _sweat on his own hairline.

Cas gives Sam a grave look. _Dean is not Dean. _The words pop into his head unbidden and for a moment Sam wonders if that was Cas, sending some kind of divine telegram, but dismisses it.

"So where do we go?" says Sam.

"There is a man," says Cas. "In two two one B." ("Two two one B," Dean echoes.)

"Can he help us? Is that it? Is that where John Watson lives?"

There is no response.

It is only when they've rung the doorbell _(this is all happening so fast, faster than usual, and Sam feels like something's different) _that it occurs to Sam he has been willingly following around someone that may or may not be having their _brain messed with, _which wasn't too smart, but before Sam can worry about the potential repurcussions of this the door opens.

There's a woman, in her fifties, with a tired but not weary face, and emitting waves of flowery perfume. Probably not called John. "Hello," she says. "Have you come to speak to Sherlock?"

Sam resists the urge to exchange a look with Dean. Cas looks like he's going to say something so Dean clears his throat and says "Ma'am, we're FB-"

"Scotland Yard," Sam interjects.

"…Yes. We were wondering if we could speak to-"

"Oh yes, of course. Very nice to ask, the last lot just barged straight in." The woman wrings her hands and steps back to make space for them. "Apart from that nice Detective Inspector, what was his name?" Sam is about to suggest 'Hopkins' but she goes "Ah, _Lestrade, _yes, always in and out. Well, I'll just tell him you're here. Sherlock'll be glad of another murder." She sets off up some stairs.

Well. Whatever Sam had been expecting, this wasn't it. He wonders if this is the wrong address, and if they should make their escape before being forced to invent a tale for this Shylock? Sherdock? guy.

Dean and Cas push past him and follow her up the stairs like magnetised zombies. Sam sighs and does the same.

The door at the top of the stairs is half ajar and he can hear the woman saying "Some men to see you. I didn't know they recruited Americans. I suppose the rules have all changed now."

The door opens further to let them in. Sam finds his heart is thudding fast for some reason.

The apartment is… Sam would say disordered, but it appears to have some sort of organised system, if an unfathomable one. He sees _The Guardian, _a violin, a _gun, _and a tall, vaguely familiar man in an armchair: mid-thirties, Sam reckons.

His face is long and slender and he has messy brown hair. He's also reading The Bible and doesn't look up except to glance when Dean enters first.

"You're not Scotland Yard," he says – no, drawls. His voice is enunciated, posh, but Sam doesn't know enough about British accents to judge.

"Err, yes we are," says Dean, but it's a weak lie because they have no ID.

A small, almost shiver-like smirk passes over the man's lips. He turns the thin page with a _flick _and seems poised to say something, but he looks up from the book and his expression drops. "_You!_"

Sam follows his gaze. The man has half-risen from his seat, staring at Castiel, who is staring back with his head tilted.

The man gets up fully and stands before him. Castiel's doing the full-blown Deep Soul-Searching Look. Moments pass.

"Sherlock Holmes," the angel says finally. "The falling man."

"You know this guy? He a hunter?" says Sam.

"Who are you?" says Sherlock, desperately, and gives Cas a onceover that would be weird if it weren't for how intent it was. "Wait – American accent but the clothes of a businessman rather than a tourist, so working in Britain. Shoes and clothes almost untarnished, so you haven't been out long today. Tie back to front suggests a hurry – the journey was short and sudden, but you know how to return and that you won't stay long, or you didn't have time to take anything with you. And you _were _married." He pauses to breathe. Sam tries to process what the hell just happened.

"That is James Novak," Cas replies. "I am Castiel."

Sherlock's eyes have a way of moving, flitting around and then _fixating. _"I've seen you," he says. "In my dreams. You've been there."

Dean's mouth shuts suddenly as he connects the dots, but all he says is "Sorry, should we leave you two alone for a while?"

"Who are you?" Sherlock turns to them with rather less interest, just as Sam says "Sorry, who are you?" and Dean says "Who is this guy?"

There's a pause.

"I'm Sam Winchester," Sam offers awkwardly. He wonders if he should extend a hand but decides it's not worth the risk.

"And this is your brother."

"Yeah. Dean." Dean goes for a cheery smile. Wait. What. "How'd you know-"

"Earlobes," says Sherlock.

"Oh," says Sam. "Sure. Okay."

Sherlock watches them and something about him, again, is vaguely familiar, but Sam can't immediately place it. "Sherlock Holmes," says Sherlock. "Consulting detective. Only one in the world."

_Oh. _The woman's comment about murder suddenly isn't quite so ominous.

Dean looks suspicious and a hand reaches where there would be gun only to meet with air. "Okay, 'consulting detective,' wanna tell me why Cas here is hopping into your dreams? And how come you know so much about us? What are you? A witch? Angel? Mutated wendigo?"

"What on earth are you talking about?" says Sherlock. "It's called the art of deduction."

Dean scoffs. "Right, like that answers anything."

"Well, it does."

There's a growing tumult of confusion so Sam stops. "Okay. I think we all should… sit down and have a talk."

Silence. Sherlock stares at them one at a time. "Fine."

They arrange the various chairs and sofa with barely repressed haste, and settle into an uneasy quiet.

The downstairs door slams.

"Ah," says Sherlock. "That'll be John."


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Thanks very much for reviews, they are appreciated. :D _

* * *

John Watson, the man apparently billed to save the world, appears in the doorway with an orange bag that says, in between creases, _Sa-ns-ry's _and a milk carton in his hand. "I stopped off on the way back and got digestives… oh, hello. Is this a case?"

Sam gapes. This is the man? He looks at Dean and disbelief is reflected in his face as he watches John Watson lean a cane against the wall and head to what Sam assumes is the kitchen. There's a rustle as he deposits his shopping.

"John, I'd like you to meet Sam and Dean Winchester, and Castiel," says Sherlock. Somehow he looks calm. "This is John Watson, my… colleague. And friend."

John re-emerges from the kitchen. "Hello - oh," he does a doubletake when he sees Dean. "Sorry, do I know you? Your face looks familiar."

Dean's staring. He recovers himself just in time. "Uh, I don't… I don't think so."

"What did you say your name was?"

"Dean Winchester."

"Right." He glances at Sherlock. He's in his forties, shortish and stout, with a small square head and a dash of blond hair. "I suppose Sherlock hasn't offered you tea?"

Sam thinks in a blinding unexpected flash: _tea-limp-cane-Dean. _

Someone must have answered him, because John says "Alright" and grabs a chair to join them.

Whereupon Castiel fixes John with the Look. "It is not your fault that your sister reverts back to alcohol when she feels alone."

Oh god, not this _now. _

"And your therapist cannot help you with your dreams of Hell."

Sam notices that John's expression is less _how the hell does he know that _and more _oh god not again. _

"Cas." Dean nudges the angel and mutters under his breath. "_No._"

"How –" John stops. "How did you know that?" He stops again. "Sherlock, you don't just _tell _people these things!"

Dean moves forward in his chair a bit. "Wait, hold on a minute, dreams of Hell?"

The other man looks at him with admirably supressed irritation. "I'd rather not make it public discussion," he says with a pointed look at Sherlock, who has stilled in a way to suggest sudden interest.

Sherlock looks at Castiel. "How did you know all that?"

Behind him, John's face loses the hidden irritation, eyes narrowing in surprise.

Is this what Sherlock Holmes does, then? Infer things about people from their appearance? Sam abruptly realises that what he felt was familiar about the British man was the expression of someone who knows everything about the others without understanding it – Castiel-like, as it were.

"I looked into his eyes and saw his soul," says Castiel.

There's a pause. John scoffs, quietly. A polite sort of scoff.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Who are you? Who is this, Sherlock?"

"I'm Castiel. I'm-" Dean elbows him before he tells them all he's an angel of the lord, which is good because Sam doesn't think this conversation can handle many more revelations.

"And why are you here?"

Sam perches on the quilt cover draped over the chair (he's discovered that if he leans back he sinks down alarmingly). It smells of cigarettes again and he's starting to wonder if maybe it's him, rather than the surroundings, because nobody else seems bothered.

"Oh-" Dean runs a hand over his face and laughs disbelievingly. "Okay, let's cut the crap. I don't know who the hell you are, but what I do know is I woke up this morning with your name written on about a hundred pieces of paper."

"My name?"

"Yeah," says Dean impatiently.

John takes a small step back. He's visibly going back and forth across the line between skeptical and intrigued. "Who… would do that? I don't know anything about that, sorry…. Could it be another John Watson?"

"We _tried _all the other John Watsons!" There's a sudden slam as Dean brings his hand down on a small table next to the chair, and the pages of _The Guardian _flutter upwards. He's more stressed than usual. Sam can't blame him.

Going for a diplomatic tone, Sam turns to John. "You mean you don't know anything about this?"

"Like hell he doesn't!" says Dean. "He said he's been dreaming of Hell, how? You been picking up on my dreams or something? Well let me tell you – they are _not _for broadcasting."

_Dean still dreams of Hell? _Sam thinks. But he's too confused to worry about that right now.

John's back on the skeptical side of the line now, getting more aggressive to match Dean. "What do you mean, 'your dreams'? Why are we talking about dreams?"

"John," says Sherlock calmly but authoritative nonetheless. It's enough to make the other man stop, sigh and turn to him.

"What?"

"This man-" He somehow manages to indicate Castiel with his eyes. "Has been in my dreams. I said I had been seeing a man. This is him."

"This exact man?"

They all turn to look at Castiel, who is currently leafing through the discarded Bible with studious interest. He looks up. "It is true that your friend has been transporting me into his dreams, yes. We are endeavouring to work out how."

Oh yeah. That's exactly what they're doing.

Looking to and from Castiel and Sherlock, who are both studying him solemnly, John waits for the moment when somebody explains themselves to him (that or gets up and yells 'APRIL FOOLS', though it is in fact mid-August).

When it doesn't happen, he extends his incredulous look-around to the two brothers. Sam almost feels sorry for the guy, except he's in pretty much the same position.

"This is ridiculous," he says finally.

Dean speaks up, having dropped the aggression from his tone. "Okay, let's get this straight. This guy-" He points to Sherlock. "Has been, I dunno, copying and pasting Cas into his dreams, except you've never seen him before. Right?" He waits for affirmation. "You-" He turns to John. "Have been dreaming of a place you've never been, but I have. And _I _am hearing and writing your name all over the place."

_Why Castiel and not me? _The thought comes unbidden into Sam's mind and is forgotten before he's even had proper time to register it was there.

There's an uncomfortable silence.

"This is mad," said John. "Sherlock, you can't be buying this."

Sam fidgets and regrets it as the seat sinks beneath him and he is lowered a few too many inches, his knees brought upwards. Nobody seems to notice though.

"This is some sort of New Age idea, is it? Some sort of… hippie thing?" John continues to look for a kind of relief.

Sherlock doesn't say anything, he's thinking hard with his hands brought up to his face as if he's praying. Most of all he stares at Castiel, who sometimes meets his gaze and sometimes doesn't. They seem to be the calmest.

"I know it sounds crazy," says Sam, attempting to raise himself back onto the edge of the chair without being obvious. "Believe me, I know. We just want to know what's going on."

"It seems we have been connected in some way by a supernatural force," Castiel informs John when the man doesn't reply.

By the look on his face, it's not helping.

Eventually John says "Sherlock-", a little helplessly, a perfect mixture of exasperation and bewilderment.

Sherlock lowers his hands to his lap. "It's irrational to theorise with little evidence, John, it biases the judgement. But the facts are clear and when you have eliminated the impossible– that being that these people are somehow imposters creating this story for some personal gain and my own experience being merely coincidental – whatever remains must be the truth. Or part of it. Why else would they be here?"

There's a fraction of a second while Sam allows that fast (seriously, it's like the guy's trying to get the words out in a slightly-too-small time frame) speech to sink in. Dean stares a little and then says "Uh, thanks. I mean, yeah. He's right."

It seems that Sherlock's agreement is what at last convinces John that they're not all just maniacs – although perhaps that's a separate question.

The man drags a kitchen chair out into the sitting-room, the legs scraping across tile far too loudly to fit easily into the recurring silence, and settles. He keeps glancing at Dean. This is understandable, as Dean is turning around in his chair and using it as a vantage point to scrutinise the flat as if expecting a book of demonic rituals to tumble off the bookcase any minute.

"Alright then," says Dean.

"Alright," John agrees. He hesitates. "No, sorry, no, explain the 'connected' part to me again?"

"Something has bound our souls together," says Castiel. "But the connection is still weak."

"So it can still be broken?" says Dean. He's noticed the gun lying on the table across the room apparently, because he keeps frowning at it.

The angel grimaces. "It's a possibility. Only if we find out what's causing it."

"Okay-" John sits up a bit. "Give me one piece of proof that we are 'connected.'"

This floors them all for a moment, because what the hell _is _the proof? Sam feels edgy, has been feeling more and more so all day. Probably because they've never had a case like this – so close to home. They're used to monsters, and stuff to fight, but now it's not even clear that there's an enemy.

Castiel stands. "I can try something but it will require the participation of your partner." He turns to Sherlock. "It will determine whether your sleep patterns are affecting me or not."

They just keep staring in each other's eyes, as if weighing each other up but on a really creepy and intense level that manages to make everyone else in the room even more uncomfortable. Sam can almost read the snarky comments on Dean's face.

"Fine," says Sherlock. John looks like he wants to intervene but says nothing.

Cas looks around at the rest of them. "Be ready."

"For what?"

"To catch him."

"Now hold on-" John starts to get out of his chair but already Castiel has lifted a hand to Sherlock's forehead, and with a touch the man goes limp and his knees buckle and he collapses to the ground, narrowly missing the table corner with his head. "Sherlock!"

Putting his arms under the man's shoulders, John hauls his friend into a less sprawled position on the floor. He flinches when Cas steps closer. "No, don't – how did you do that? What have you done to him?"

Cas observes them. "He's fine. He's asleep."

Regardless, the older man starts checking Sherlock's pulse and feeling his forehead. He does it professionally, with much greater speed and efficiency than Sam would have expected. He's done this before.

Behind him, Dean gets up. "Cas…"

The angel's swaying slightly, knocking a pen off the table as he lurches against it, and Sam's stomach goes cold as he recognises what's going to happen. _How…?_

"Cas!" And yes, Castiel is collapsing too, not with the same instantaneous loss of consciousness but a slow dimming, an unsteadiness that becomes an unequilibrium until he is also falling. Sam and Dean are ready this time and grab him as he drops.

They lay him out next to Sherlock for lack of a better plan – and true, an inability to lug the guy any further. John stares. He doesn't look angry anymore, just plain bewildered.

"How did that happen?" he says with a dangerous calm. "He – what's his name, Castiel? – he just touched Sherlock and knocked him out. And now he's passed out too. No, they're _sleeping_." He laughs, slightly harsh. "How – how…"

Sam and Dean exchange a look. How do you tell someone that they just met an angel of the Lord?

"It's complicated," says Sam.

After another check of Sherlock's pulse and some incredulous gaping, John takes some of the cushions from the chairs and uses them to support his head. Then, after a minute indecision, he does the same to Castiel.

"I believe you now," he says. "At least, I'll try to, because I really don't understand what's going on. You need to tell me. You need to tell me everything."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Castiel is the one to wake first. It half seems to Sam as if there should be something impressive about a divine entity waking (didn't the guy say once that angels never slept?), like windows breaking or rain starting up, the sort of stuff angels seem to pull off at any moment, with ease.

But no. It's just kind of… normal. One minute Cas is lying there and Sam's thinking about how he shouldn't watch him sleeping because that would be weird, which only makes him more self-conscious everytime he does glance at him, and the next Cas is opening his eyes, blinking and looking down at himself as if to check that he is in fact, still there.

"Cas!" says Sam. "Are you… alright?"

"Of course, why wouldn't I be?" The angel stands, using the table for some support. He gives Sam a look halfway between Angelic Intensity and the confusion of waking up in an unexpected place. Or just waking up, in his case.

Sam doesn't really know how to respond to that. It doesn't matter because Castiel turns, looks at Sherlock, still prone on the floor.

"He'll wake soon," he says. He frowns, like he's looking for an elusive word. "How long was I…. out?"

"Err, about an hour." It's approximately seven in the evening and Sam can feel jetlag starting to settle. He pauses. "So were you, like, in his dream?"

Cas shakes his head. "I can only send people into a dreamless sleep. Regardless, it was… enlightening."

Sam wants to know _how_ exactly he managed to be enlightened on the subject whilst unconscious, but he is interrupted by the much more noticeable awakening of Sherlock.

The man – consulting detective, hadn't he said? – opens his eyes, stares at the ceiling for a moment, then sits up straight in one swift movement, all but _sweeps_ to his feet, and brushes specks of dust off his lapels. He puts a hand to his head – to check for an injury, presumably – and his eyes narrow when he finds none.

"I see," he says, looking at Castiel. "What did you do to me?"

"I sent you to sleep."

The word _how _is forming on Sherlock's lips, Sam can see it, but the man swallows it and his brows furrow, as if he's determined to work out the mystery for himself.

Sherlock has a way of asking questions, Sam thinks. Quietly, as if he's asking himself first of all, and then, when his internal bank of knowledge fails him, turns his gaze upon the other person to let them answer it.

Cas turns to Sam. "Where's Dean?"

"Uh… He's in that room. With John." The other two both look at Sam and frown.

He guesses it does sound kind of weird: they were the most hostile people in the group an hour ago.

Following John demanding an explanation, Dean and Sam had offered him a heavily edited and modified version of their life, in which they were mechanics with a dad who had dabbled in paranormal research, collected a few old books, that sort of thing.

It was all going relatively well (they had convinced the guy they weren't nutcases, and Dean was even permitted to check the fridge for beer) until John wanted to know how Cas had sent Sherlock to sleep.

Apparently instead of offering a reasonable justification, Dean had thought it more appropriate to demand why they had a gun in their apartment. And a box of ears in their fridge.

John had threatened to leave if they kept on evading the questions, but Dean had blocked the exit, so John had redirected to the kitchen and through another a doorway into some unknown room.

Before Sam could stop him, Dean went in after him and there was the sound of a door being locked.

That had been about thirty minutes ago. Sam had heard some shouting which had died down to the murmur of a rapt discussion, and they were still in there.

Cas sighs. "I need them in here. I think I know what's going on."

"Oh, wow, okay. I'll go get them," says Sam. He's becoming the go-between, it seems.

As he heads to the kitchen he hears Sherlock's voice behind him saying conversationally "I think I know… you're not fully human, are you?"

Sam misses the response as he reaches the locked door and stops, finding if he concentrates he can hear the occasional faint hum of conversation. Then he thinks that if someone walked in and saw him listening at the door where two men have been doing who-knows-what for half an hour, it might be considered questionable.

He knocks on the door. "Guys?"

Almost straight away the sound of metal on metal indicates the key in the lock, and Dean appears. He pushes the door out to the full and John comes out as well.

They look frazzled, like having gone through a gruelling interrogation, and Dean's got his tight-lipped stoic face on. So has John. Or maybe that's just his normal face.

John glances at him as he walks past and offers a weak, fake sort of smile. It looks like he's going to say something when Dean notices that Cas is awake. "Cas! 'Bout time."

"Sherlock-" John goes to him. Sam notices that he's not limping like he was when he arrived. On the other hand, Dean is. Sam doesn't know what to make of that. "Are you alright?"

Sherlock waves him away. "Yes, I'm perfectly fine."

Judging from the look on Castiel's face, they are an extremely long way from 'fine.' Worry like a stone drops in Sam's stomach.

"I've seen this happen before," says Cas to the room at large. "Our souls have been bound together-"

"Yeah, so you keep saying," says Dean.

"-but that requires a trigger. It…" He pauses and looks down, as if trying to find the words to express it to the humans around him. "When someone dies, their soul reincarnates into someone else. It's the natural cycle. But it can go wrong. If someone dies before their time, unexpectedly, their soul might fragment altogether, or a substitute is put in to finish their role in life."

There is silence. He continues. "It happened too fast. Someone died before their time, and in the hurry to replace them, two universes with different incarnations of that person… meshed together. When I looked into John's eyes, I saw Dean. But a different version of him. You – we - should not exist in the same universe."

There's the sound of a car door opening and then slamming outside, and the rumble of the engine as it drives off.

Sam says "I… uh… what?"

"Wait," says Dean. "You mean me and John Watson are the same person from different universes?"

"Distorted versions of each other, and we are now in the same universe, but yes."

"And you and Sherlock here?"

"The same. Though… if only one person died, it's unclear why there are two sets of us. It could be that one of us…" He trails off as if intending to say more, but doesn't.

Dean stares at John for a moment, and then down at himself, and back at John. "I don't see it."

"He's right," says John, somewhat reluctantly. "If all this is true – _if _it is, there'd be some sort of resemblance between us, don't you think? And we're… well, we're not. The same, that is."

"I see it," says Sherlock. Sam gets the distinct impression they're going to get another fast-paced lecture, and he's right. "The basis is sound. You both have the stature of a soldier, a fighter, though most likely for different reasons. Most likely the repurcussions of these experiences cause the greatest similarities. You both suffer from nightmares, as you both said yourselves, and are accustomed to keeping a gun or weapon of some kind close at hand. Always on guard. You have both illustrated a down-to-earth and straightforward way of thinking, opting for a simple explanation where a complicated one is available. You both-"

"Yeah, okay, enough already." They both look so awkward it's almost funny.

Sam begins to see what Sherlock sees (hell, that guy's more observant than a camera): A kind of guarded posture, identically stoic faces. John looks down at the carpet and shuffles slightly. Dean shoves his hands in his pockets and clears his throat.

"Well one thing's for sure," he says. "I see how you and Cas channel each other, alright."

There's another pause. Sam feels like something's missing. It's probably the lack of John's protests. What the hell did Dean say to him in that room?

All things considered, he doesn't really want to know.

"Wait a minute," says Sam. "You said that sometimes souls die 'before their time.' I thought… how does that work?"

Castiel straightens, gearing up for another complicated explanation. "There are certain parts of time that have not been written. That can go either way, and determine the future. Usually these are for pivotal moments."

"What, you mean like a blank in a timeline?"

"Yes. In those moments, anything could happen. Things that could alter the course of the future. Sometimes nothing happens, but – as I suspect is what's happened here – sometimes they can cause huge problems. In this case, a soul – or more - has been killed that shouldn't have died, causing Dean and John to coexist."

If anything, this has raised more questions than it has answered.

John looks unconvinced. "Sounds like the plot of a cheap sci-fi film if you ask me."

"So," says Sam. "How do we undo it? How do we stop this?"

Cas gives him such a serious look that Sam's heart starts beating a bit faster, because that is _not _the face people have when they have good news, a simple solution. It's the face of a teacher about to tell you that you've failed an important test.

"Well?" says Dean.

"I don't know."

Dean throws his hands up in the air. "Oh well, thanks a lot. That helps a bunch. How can you not _know? _You said you'd seen this happen before. What did they do?"

He sighs. "One of them agreed to kill themselves."

"Alright," says John. "Well, clearly that's not going to happen."

Dean looks at Cas kind of accusingly. "You must be able to do _something._"

"I can't _split apart universes_, Dean." Cas flares a little. Sam wonders distantly if his wings actually ruffle when that happens.

"There can't be nothing to do. There's always something. Give me something to work with."

"Do you know who it was who died and caused the universes to merge?" Sam adds that to his list of things he never thought he'd have to ask.

"No."

Sam clings on to the idea anyway. "We could search the obituaries."

Sherlock frowns. "Hundreds of people will have died in recent weeks, thousands even. It could be anyone, in any country. And how do we know which is the one we're looking for?"

Everyone looks at Castiel hopefully. His patience is being strained. He's standing even more stiffly than usual. "You won't know. But I can trace souls in Heaven and try and find one that matches Dean or Sherlock."

"I thought you said it would be dangerous to be seen in Heaven again." Sam glances at John and Sherlock, unsure how much they know of the whole Heaven-Is-a-Place-In…Heaven thing.

"It's manageable," says Cas shortly.

"And there are five of us," says John. "To search obituaries, I mean. And take down names. And… find things out."

Cas takes a step back, like he's making room around himself.

He gazes around at them all. "And remember that we can't afford to waste time."

And well, Sam's prepared to take his word for it.

"I'll go," says Cas. The room temperature lowers a couple of degrees.

"Cas, wait-"

But the angel's gone.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"-find anything?"

Sam half-jolts awake, but he's been drifting on the edge of consciousness for some time anyway. His thoughts come slowly, fuzzily, and he doesn't open his eyes. He's not in a bed. He shifts his head and finds the material sticks to his skin. Leather. He's on a leather couch. There's also a faint smell of sweat which is easily recognisable as clothes that have been worn too long. His own.

What time is it? The last he remembers, it was getting to be midnight, there was no sign of Cas or Sherlock, who had left to go and find local city records or something, and Sam was dizzy with tiredness and hunger and jetlag and the stupid number of names he'd recorded in a notebook with increasingly illegible handwriting.

He cracks his eyes open a fraction.

The room's low-lit, a couple of lamps around the tables streaking yellow-white light across the walls and casting huge shadows.

He sees John leaning forward at the desk in front of the computer. His face has a white glow from the laptop screen and the wrinkles of his face are thrown into relief, but he looks focused.

Dean's in one of the chairs nearby with a stack of newspapers. (_Where did he get them? _Sam wonders). He has the same expression. Sam contemplates, in a half-not-there sort of way, that when they're both still and quiet like that, they really do seem similar. But John is not his brother. No, that would be weird…

He closes his eyes and attempts to get back to sleep. No use trying to research if he's not taking anything in.

After a while comes Dean's voice, a low hum that Sam seldom hears his brother use, preferring loud and, well, brash. "Well, I've got nothing."

"Neither have I." John's voice is more articulate, and, while not being quiet exactly, fits well into the quietness. Calm, perhaps. "I don't even know what I'm looking for."

For a few minutes there is no sound except the leafing and crinkling of pages as they're turned, and the occasional click of a mouse.

"So, uh…" That's Dean again. "What your friend said – Sherlock – about being a soldier. Soldier-like. Whatever. Any of that…. true?"

The mouse clicks. "I was deployed in Afghanistan. As a medic. I'm a doctor now."

"Oh. Well. That sucks." There goes his brother with all the sensitivity of a sledgehammer.

Papers rustle and a chair creaks as somebody changes position.

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Are you… a soldier?" John doesn't sound so comfortable either, though it's hard to tell in his voice, which stays level and even. He's been struggling like hell to accept the situation, fighting against his instincts and beliefs.

Sam thinks suddenly that his brother should say yes, his mind filling with half-formed arguments lost in a haze of sleep that yes, his brother is a soldier, and a hell of a good one, just not the sort anybody gets, but he's seen Dean come back from Hell and recover and get on with his life and protect people and fight without giving up even when the situation seems doomed and his stupidly devout loyalty to people he cares about that he won't even admit. If that's not the description of a soldier then… then… and he… he…

He's still clutching a notebook that he used to write the names in. Sam gets momentarily distracted by this realisation, and forgets what he was thinking.

"No… no, I haven't been in a… a war or anything," says Dean. "Been to Hell though. Which I guess you know already, because of the dreams and you know, the whole you-are-me thing."

Sam moves to a slightly better position and the paper slips in his hand, crumpling as he closes his fist to catch it. He stills, thinking the other two will notice he's awake, but there's no reaction. He slowly brings his fist closer to his chest, the notepaper enclosed inside.

"Now Cas," Dean is saying. "Sam's the brains, but Cas… He's a fighter, for all his being a Grade-A nerd, and certifiable."

"He is a bit… well, he's a bit like Sherlock. Unusual, if you don't mind my saying so."

"He saved my life, and he can be an asshole at the same time."

For the first time John sounds almost amused, friendly even. "I definitely know what _that's _like."

Sam doesn't have to look to know his brother's smirking, that sort of reluctant half-smile when he's railing at Sam for being a 'health nut' (i.e. Sam eats an apple) but he can't quite fool anyone that he's really annoyed.

"I guess you would, from what I saw… is – is Sherlock, does he always talk that fast? And do the whole 'telling you everything about yourself' thing?"

"Yes, he's always like that." There's shorter gaps in the conversation now. Sam thinks, as his limbs grow heavier: _Look at that. They're getting on like a house on… on… _He shifts and struggles to stay awake without really knowing why. "First time I met him he knew everything about me just by looking at me. The 'art of deduction,' he calls it."

"Maybe that's because of Cas. You know, their being connected. If they are."

There's a beat of silence. Sam thinks that John says something, but either it's so quiet that he doesn't pick up on it, or he imagined it. Opening his eyes a fraction, he unclenches his fist and tries to uncrease the notepaper without making any sound. It's important, that paper.

"How do you believe all of this so easily?" John's saying. "How can you just accept all this stuff about universes?"

Dean actually laughs. "I've spent most of my life dealing with stuff I didn't think could be real. What's one more piece of crazy to add to the collection?"

Quiet again for some time. Someone clears their throat and makes a pointless _huhmm _noise to fill the silence. Newspaper rustles and with Sam's ear pressed against the leather of the couch it sounds like the crackling of a nearby fire.

Dean's talking again. "Your friend said he's a detective."

"Consulting detective." A scoff but not a malicious one. "He told me that the police go to him when they're out of their depth. Sounds arrogant – he can be a right dick sometimes - but it's true."

There's an almost incredulous laugh. Dean.

Sam forces his eyes open again. Everything is blurry, a mess of orange-yellow-white interspered with grainy shadows and there's a snatch of Dean's denim pants in the corner of his vision. He blinks and glances down at the paper to make sure it's straightened out.

The paper says:

_Premature deaths in the past month in the London area:_

_Kate Summers, 4__th__ August, suicide._

_Sasha West, 7__th__ Aug., head-on collision._

_Mark Thorpe, 9__th__ Aug., head injury_

The list continues, endless names and names and names that mean nothing to Sam.

_Aaron Polowski, 6__th__ Aug., suicide._

And it ended, messily, on:

_Emrys Pendragon, 10__th__ Aug., drowned._

Sam stares at his own cramped handwriting until the points and curves of the ink no longer seem to make sense. He glances up at the other two to check they haven't noticed him awake (he doesn't know why he's trying to keep it a secret, except that Dean would probably fuss and either way, it looks like his brother's actually being _nice _to John Watson and it's a moment not to be missed).

From the strange sideways angle, it looks like Dean is putting down the last paper onto the heap beside him. Dean pauses and turns in the chair, watching John for a moment. John's fingers are clacking over the keyboard. At the last moment he looks up and catches Dean's look.

There's a moment of awkwardness where neither seems to know what to do, caught in the act in eye contact. Sam almost snorts.

Then Dean says "So… are we cool now? You're not gonna try and kill me anymore?" This is a reference Sam doesn't want to understand.

"Yes," says John eventually. "We may as well work together, as… as adults."

"OK. I can work with that." Dean turns back even though he hasn't got anything to do anymore. He looks tired. They all look tired. "This doesn't make us friends though."

Sam feels his eyes drifting shut.

"Course not," says John, though there's a smile in his voice. "I only met you today."

"And with the whole us being the same person thing-"

"-And we're a little out of our comfort zone. Or _I_ am-"

"It would be weird."

"Yes. Agreed."

The conversations hums on, but Sam's mind is drifting and his hand is relaxing on the paper, which slides onto the leather sofa, and it almost feels like he's dropping away and then he's gone.

He dreams of mediaeval knights and legends and dragons.


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: Thanks for the reviews, they are much appreciated. :D_

* * *

The day starts with a slam and a lot of things happening loudly very fast.

"Wake up, Sleeping Beauty," says Dean, and the first thing Sam processes is something being thrown at his face.

There's a truck revving up outside and some people shouting in the street and white light pouring through and illuminating dust molecules floating in the air.

"I – what-" He fumbles and struggles to get up, grappling with the material covering half his head. It's a dark shirt, though not one he recognises. "What time is it?"

"Time to rise and shine!" Dean moves towards the kitchen. "John said we could use the toaster but I don't like my food coming from the same box as someone's toe, so cereal alright for you?"

Sam stands and stretches. There are discarded books, newspapers, pages of lists and names everywhere. It looks like a bombsite. His first morning in Great Britain, and guess what, he spends it feeling achey from the cramped sleeping position and in the same clothes he was wearing last night like a hundred other mornings.

"John said we could borrow shirts, but his wouldn't fit your gargantuan self so that's one of Sherlock's."

Sam follows his voice to the kitchen. There's a counter strewn with what looks like a forgotten science experiment, with some questionable-looking liquids in some glass beakers near the edge of the table. "So it's 'John' now?"

"Yeah," Dean pauses in pouring out some kind of muesli into a bowl to look at Sam. "Turns out he's not a complete douchebag."

Was he ever? Sam shakes his head disbelievingly. "So where is everyone?"

"Cas is still cloud-hopping somewhere." The fridge opens and a fresh carton of milk is produced. "John went to bed. And nobody knows where the hell Sherlock is, but I hear that's pretty normal."

Sam observes his brother trying (and failing) to find the spoons. There's light greyish pouches under his eyes and he yawns several times. "Did you sleep at all?"

"What are you, my mother?" Not looking at him, Dean unscrews the milk lid and starts pouring. "I slept."

Which means, of course, that he dozed off for about half an hour at some point. Does Dean really think he can fob Sam off with that, or is he really just that stubborn? Sam muses. Yep, pretty sure he's just stubborn. And obnoxious.

"Here." A bowl (with a fork rather than a spoon) is shoved across the counter towards Sam with too much force and the milk leaps in the bowl, nearly splattering him.

"Do you think they'll let me use their shower?" he says.

Dean shrugs. "I don't know, I already did."

Of course. "So I guess you haven't found anything. Like, a person who caused this whole universe mutation." Sam stares into his bowl thoughtfully. "I still don't get that. I'm thinking of going to the library."

Dean puts his bowl down with vigour. Sam almost jumps. "You can't find the answers to everything in a _book, _Sam!"

This isn't anger, not really, just the culmunation of a night of failure and sleep deprivation and worry and the beginnings of repressed fear.

When Sam doesn't reply, Dean picks up the bowl again and resumes eating like nothing has happened. There's a familiar pang in Sam's stomach, an anxiety when he looks at his brother that sometimes seems to recede into nothingness but not really, it's always there in the background, too constant to be paid attention to and too relentless to be ignored.

He fiddles with his fork and watches the bits of muesli get soaked in the milk, turning to mush and smaller bits drifting around and sinking.

"I think I'll have a shower now." Sam drops the fork with a clatter. He starts to head to the bathroom but then he stops and turns. "Dean?"

"What?"

"What did you _say _to… John? In that room yesterday? Does he know, like _know _about us? And Castiel?"

Dean stirs the cereal with the fork. "I told him… enough."

"You want to expand on that?"

"Would you-" The other hunter snorts. "Would you just go and take your shower already?"

"Dean, I need to know what you _said_."

"Wow, relax Samantha. He knows that we're not mechanics, but I didn't exactly give him my entire lifestory either. Let's just say… nothing you say will freak him out."

He doesn't realise he's tense until he feels his shoulders loosen. "Okay."

* * *

When Sam emerges from the bathroom twenty minutes later, hair dripping and his left wrist throbbing from an incident with the shower dial, there's three times as many people bustling around and mud and paper all over the floor and strewn across the carpet.

"What's going on?" he says as he enters the sitting-room.

Sherlock's pacing around the room at a frantic pace, still in the suit he went out in last night, but his dark curls are sticking up in strange directions and he has a wild look in his eyes.

John's standing close by somewhat uncertainly, saying "Sherlock. Sherlock, just stop a minute. What's going on?" while Dean tries to salvage the pieces of paper before they get trampled on. This paper too, is covered in names.

"I can't stop," says Sherlock, treading an erratic circle of dirt into the ground. "Don't you understand, John? I can't stop. I can't stop, I have to keep going, I found names, I found lots of names, but none of them make _sense, _I've been searching all night and it doesn't make _sense. _Why can't I see the answer? It's right there in front of me, it always is, but I can't _stop, _I can't _stop, _don't you _understand, _John?"

And so his rambling goes on. John sighs and makes a frustrated sound, then decides to stand in Sherlock's path.

"Sherlock, could you just stay still-" He puts an arm out when Sherlock attempts to go around him, so the detective just turns around and makes a smaller circle.

"Why can't he stop?" says Sam.

Dean and John shrug at the same time. "He gets like this sometimes," says John. "Well, not like _this _exactly."

"I can't stop, I can't stop, if I stop… I can't stop, John, John, John, I can't stop…"

"Maybe he really can't physically stop," says Sam.

Dean looks at him. "What, you think this might be… he might be channeling whatever Cas is doing in Heaven?"

"I kind of hope it's that way round." Sam gets a fleeting mental image of Castiel bombarding from cloud to cloud in a large heavenly circle.

"I don't know," says John. "It might just be Sherlock."

Sherlock stops. Just like that, mid-step. He lowers his foot and stills next to the window, cast in the morning light, and the persistent chatter ceases. Sam can't see his face as he stands there, motionless. It seems almost as if he's drooping.

"Sherlock?"

"John." The British man turns, glancing around at his dirt track and the general chaos. He appears calm, his eyes having lost the alarming glaze. Instead he seems incredibly weary, face pale and head tilted downwards.

"What was all that about?" says John.

Sherlock blinks as if it's taking him a second to work out what John could be referring to. "I've had a very bizarre experience, John."

"Yeah, we figured." Dean brushes some mud off a few sheets of paper and squints at the handwriting a second.

"I went out and I was full of a kind of energy. I couldn't stop moving." He pauses, cuts himself off maybe.

John looks worried. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, yes. It was very useful. I found a lot of names."

Sam wonders what Cas is doing in Heaven, that it would affect Sherlock in this way.

"Maybe you should rest now, Sherlock, if you've been walking around all night," says John.

"I don't need to. Rest will only slow me down-"

The doctor has a long-suffering expression that indicates a long history of these arguments."I wasn't asking. _Sit._"

Sherlock wavers, and then sways. Everybody flinches, expecting him to fall at any moment. He turns and snatches the wad of greyish paper from Dean's hands, then flops onto the couch. "There's something I'm missing. What am I _missing_?"

As he starts scanning through the names, holding the sheets up above his head for the light to catch them, Sam shoots John questioning look.

"This is the normal Sherlock," says John. Then, to his housemate: "I'll make a cup of tea."

"Two sugars," says Sherlock, without looking away from the paper. Whenever he holds one sheet to the side to look at the one below it, some specks of dust and dirt cascade downwards onto his once-pristine shirt.

The doctor's voice travels from the kitchen as the kettle starts to rumble. "Anybody else want tea?"

Dean is shaken into action from where he has been standing and gazing vacantly at Sherlock with unseeing eyes. "Yeah, you got any coffee?" He brushes his hands of the mud and disappears into the kitchen.

Sam is left with Sherlock, who takes no notice of him.

"So, uh," says Sam, feeling the need to say something. "You find anything while you were out?"

"Names," says Sherlock. "But none of them mean anything. There should be a _link, _something obvious, something that connects up."

Out of nowhere he picks one sheet, stares at it for a long instant, and then crumples it up and tosses it behind his head, where it rolls and lies still on the floor.

"Oh." Sam wanders over to the desk where John was sat last night.

There's two notepads, one with Dean's handwriting and one which must be John's, the words small and neat and rounded.

_Pauline Simone, shot, aged 46. Usman Khan, suicide, aged 62. Sandy White, car crash, aged 13…. _

"I thought I might go to the library today," says Sam.

Sherlock manages to exude disdain just through his tone of voice. "Already did that during the night. Nothing useful."

Sam blinks. "Libraries are open at night-time?"

"No."

It seems like that's put an end to the conversation for a while and several more snowballs of paper sail across the room.

"Does your brother have a problem with his shoulder or his arm?"

"What?" Sam looks up, half wondering if he heard that right.

Sherlock drops the papers so they scatter onto his chest in a flamboyant gesture. His eyes are fixed on the ceiling. "Dean Winchester. Did he ever have a past injury, a dislocated shoulder?"

"I, uh…" Sam trails off as Dean and John re-enter the room, John brandishing a cup of steaming tea which he hands to the prone detective.

Sitting up to drink it, Sherlock's gaze appears to be directed inward. He's thinking hard. He takes a deep gulp from the tea (_how the hell is that not burning him?_) and massages his temples.

Going over to the desk, John starts to rearrange the stacks of paper from last night. There's so much damn paper nobody seems to know what to do with all the names. In fact, nobody seems to know what to do full stop, except for Castiel, of whom there is still no sign.

After five minutes, Sherlock's started slumping against the edge of the couch, eyelids drooping and then flickering up again. "John…"

"Yes, Sherlock?"

There's a _thump _as Sherlock goes completely limp on his side and his eyes shut. "John, there's a link. There 'as t'be a link…." His words are slurring.

"Yes, you've told us all numerous times."

"'F I could jus' fin'…." His words become increasingly indistinguishable, dropped to a near-silent garble, and when he falls silent and his face relaxes it becomes clear he's fallen asleep.

The corner of John's mouth curls upwards. "I didn't think he'd drink it."

"You drugged him?" says Dean.

"Sleeping pill. Only way he would rest."

Dean snorts and shakes his head, but Sam feels restless, like he ought to be doing something in particular.

"Well," Dean's saying. "I'm gonna hope that the, uh, 'soul connection' doesn't affect me like-"

He is cut off by the sound of a tremendous crash from the kitchen and the sound of plates smashing and silverware tumbling onto the ground.

Dean, John and Sam exchange a look before following the sound as it recedes.

When Sam enters the kitchen, at first all he sees is an explosion of dishware fragments, cutlery and milk from a forgotten bowl of cereal covering the floor. It seems as if everything has been dragged off one of the counters. One of the cupboard doors lies ajar.

It's only when some of the cutlery on the floor starts _moving _that he steps around the counter and sees a mass of tan trenchcoat. "Cas!"

The angel gives a splutter which isn't quite a groan, and throws out a hand to use the side of the counter for support as he stumbles to his feet. Forks cascade off him and rattle onto the ground.

He brushes away their attempts at help and stands there, swaying slightly and his face ashen.

"Are you alright?"

A pause. "I'm… fine."

Dean sighs. "I'll try again. Are you alright?"

As Cas steps forward, making a fragment of plate crunch under his shoe in a small puddle of milk, Sam can't help but notice that there seems to be something of a theme for unexpected objects covering the floor recently.

"Yes," says Cas. He sounds a bit perplexed, and even irritated. "I was in Heaven… I found a soul-"

"You found the person?" says Sam.

Castiel's face darkens. "I _did, _but before I could discover… who it was I was… thrown back here."

John's hovering in the doorway. While he's adjusted to Dean and Sam's presence, he doesn't really seem to know what to make of Castiel, as a whole. That's understandable.

When Cas takes another step forward he looks down at the crunch at his feet, and notices all the havoc. "I apologise. My landing was unexpected." And then he wobbles dangerously to one side.

"No offence Cas, but you look like you're about to have another close encounter with the floor," says Dean. "Wanna tell us what that's about?"

Cas stares at him and blinks hard. His speech is laboured. "I don't… know."

"I do," says John from the doorway. He has a strange look on his face, like he can't believe he's contributing to the conversation. "It's because Sherlock's asleep, isn't it?"

"But then shouldn't he be, like, passed out unconscious?" says Sam.

Cas grimaces and tries to shake his head. "The connection is not yet firmly established. It…fluctuates."

He proceeds to nearly impale himself on a sharp edge of a plate shard as he throws at a hand to regain his balance, so Dean suggests they move to the less hazardous sitting-room.

"Cas, sit down," says Dean when Castiel stumbles after them into the room. "You'll do yourself an injury and then we'll have to clear it up."

It's unclear how much of this is getting through to the angel, who seems to have a rather tenuous grasp on consciousness. Sam keeps waiting for the moment when he finally buckles, but it never comes.

John goes and picks up the papers that are scattered over Sherlock and the floor and the couch. "You said you found who it was who died," he says.

Cas gives a small nod. He directs all his words towards his shoes. "It was unusual."

"You sure you don't know who it was?" says Dean. There's a silence before all of Castiel's replies, as if he's mustering up the energy to speak.

"I couldn't get a name. But it was not a normal soul." He pauses. "It was very old."

"What, like a pensioner?"

"No." Cas drags his gaze upwards to meet their eyes for an instant. "You don't understand. It was older than a human soul should be. Centuries."

Dean lets out a low whistle. "Centuries? Well, uh, was it a dude? Chick?"

"Souls do not have genders."

"Right. Well, that's real useful. Somebody really old."

John moves a bit closer. "And this soul was the past incarnation of… me? And Dean?"

Castiel seems almost reluctant to answer. "No. It was more similar to Sherlock's soul."

"Okay…" Sam takes a moment to try and wrap everything around his mind. "So let me get this straight. Somebody died before their, uh, their time, and this made two universes come together to finish that person's timeline, making Cas and Sherlock coexist… That doesn't explain Dean and John."

"They could be incidental," says Cas.

"Incidental?" Dean looks almost offended.

"It's possible, but unlikely, that two people needed replacements at once," says Cas. His voice sounds strained, and they all lean in to hear him as it drops in volume and pitch. "More likely is that you coincide with the first soul. Say, the soul needed someone else to help fulfil their role. But when two reincarnations were produced, so the other person was produced twice."

"Alright… well, I understood about forty percent of that," says Dean.

"Anything that would help identify them?" Sam imagines scouring through all the names they've got so far just with the idea of 'old.' "Nationality? When they died?"

The angel says one word, but it's little more than a whisper.

"What?" Sam gets closer.

"Come on, stay with us, Cas," says Dean. "This is important."

Castiel forces his head up and tries again. "The way they died…"

"Yeah?"

"Water." He takes a deep shuddering breath. "They died with water."

* * *

It's been two days, and Sam is noticing some things about the other four.

He notices that Dean starts limping when the conversation turns to something that stresses him. At first it was only once or twice, but now it doesn't take much to set it off. Stranger still, Dean rarely realises, but John will generally stop using his cane at around the same moments. It's as if they've swapped.

He notices that sometimes John will rub his left shoulder, and he thinks of what Sherlock asked him.

He notices that the Bible never leaves the sitting-room.

He notices Sherlock saying things that Castiel has said earlier, or Dean echoing John in his words, and Sam struggles to work out if it's just coincidence or the sign of something deeper. He doesn't really like thinking about it. John is not, and will never be, the same as his brother.

He notices that while the universes blending wreaks unpredictable results on his brother, and his friend, and two supposed strangers, it seems to have made no impact on him.

Once or twice Sam wonders why that is.

He knows that Dean's worried. Hell, he would be freaked too if he was in danger of channelling another person at any given moment.

Sam wishes the whole thing could be _simple. _He wishes he _understood _how to solve this, what exactly they're fighting, what to expect.

A soft breeze wafts through the opened window, but it's doing nothing for the cloudy heat that pervades that atmosphere. He looks up from the sheet of paper. They've narrowed down the list to water-related deaths that they've found.

_Cecilia deMontfort, drowned in lake, 8__th__ Aug. _

_Peter Temble, sailing accident, 9__th__ Aug. _

_Laurence Simmons, died in shower, 8__th__ Aug._

_Emrys Pendragon, drowned, 10__th__ Aug._

_Anita Pritchard, flash flood, 7__th__ Aug._

John's got another sheet where he's trying to note down the ages of all these people when they died. He's sat at his desk while Sam leans over the table from the armchair. Nobody knows where the hell Sherlock is.

The room's full of the atmosphere at a library where everybody does their best to be silent, except with added tension. Outside the sky is cement gray, the light in that middling time between afternoon and evening.

It's driving him mad, just writing out these names and staring at them as if somehow the answer will be there in front of him.

Castiel and Dean are in the kitchen. Sam can hear them talking. His brother's voice echoes off the tiles, whilst Cas is quieter, a low rumble.

"I should go back to Heaven," Cas is saying. "I can try and find the soul again."

Dean sounds doubtful. "Are you sure? Like, how dangerous was it last time?"

There's a crunch as somebody steps on a fragment of plate that was overlooked during the clean-up. "I managed."

"What the hell does that mean? Damn it Cas, there are angels out to _kill _you."

"I am capable of protecting myself, Dean."

The fridge door opens with a squelch, most likely Dean getting a beer. "What about Sherlock? If you die up there, what happens to him? And what if he falls asleep, or gets knocked out or something, you're just gonna end up back here."

"I shall try and return as soon as possible."

A hiss as the beercan is opened. "Great, so now the poor guy's got to stay awake as long as you're flitting about. You know, he went on some kind of soul-bonding LSD trip while you were gone."

"That's not my _fault, _Dean. I did the best I could."

There's a moment of silence and then the sound of the can being placed on the counter with a bit too much force. "Well, what if it's not good enough?"

There is no reply.

Dean sighs. "Tell me something, Cas. This thing going on at the moment, with the soul connection… is there an answer? Like, finding this person's name, is that gonna help? You gotta be straight with me, man."

"The connection is weak still. We need to find a way to break it."

"But how? As long as we're still all living in the same universe, it's gonna happen, right?" No answer. "Tell me this – what happens if the connection doesn't break?"

There is no reply.

Sam can't quite out the next few words, but he hears Castiel say something and Dean replies "God damn it, Cas, I need to know-" but he doesn't sound angry so much as frustrated, desperate. "And don't give me crap about dying, or say there's no solution, because I'm not dying, you hear me? Nobody's _dying. _So - would you stop giving me that look like I don't know what I'm talking about, alright?"

"Your determination is admirable, Dean, but it is misplaced."

"Misplaced?" There's such a loud metallic smash that Sam jumps and his handwriting does an unnecessarily extravagant loop, thinking for a second that Cas has passed out again. Even John glances up at the doorway.

Sam relaxes at the subsequent stream of curses from the kitchen, indicating that Dean has spilt the beer. "Aw, hell-"

He is interrupted by Cas saying something.

"No, Cas, you're not just flying off! You want to be helpful? Go and help Sherlock with whatever the hell he's doing. Where is he, anyway?"

"Beside the Diana Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park."

There's such a long stretch where no voices come from the kitchen that Sam thinks Cas has already gone, buts then he hears "Dean."

"What?"

"I shall endeavour to make death a last resort."

"Cas-" But, as ever, it appears the angel has disappeared mid-sentence. "Son of a bitch."

There's some shuffling and movement, and then Dean appears in the doorway and comes into the sitting-room. He's got a damp stain on the lower half of his pantleg.

He looks at Sam and John hunched over the bits of paper. Sam waits for the comment about nerds but it never comes.

"British beer officially sucks." Dean swipes at the dark patch. "Cas has gone to find Sherlock." As if the whole apartment didn't hear the prior conversation.

The doctor ignores him, staring at the screen with abrupt interest, then turning and marking something off on the paper.

"You got something?" says Sam.

"Well…" The doctor taps his pen against the table. "It can't be the French girl, deMontfort. She wasn't even ten. Or Temble, he was twenty-seven. And three months. He has a very detailed Facebook tribute page."

"Okay." Sam takes a moment to cross out the names on his list. "So that leaves Simmons, Pendragon, and Pritchard."

Dean leans over his shoulder and peers at the paper. He's wearing one of John's shirts, a spare, and Sam hates that this fact bothers him. It reminds him of what's already happening.

"Hey," says Dean. "I'm not the reincarnation, or the soul or whatever, of a dude who kicked the bucket in the shower. I mean, come on. That's not a guy who causes universes to blend together."

"Yeah, I mean, it's not like you take showers," says Sam.

"Hey-"

"I mean, let's be realistic here."

Dean gives him a look as he heads over to where John's sitting. "Bitch."

"Jerk." Sam thinks. "Anyway, isn't this Sherlock's soul guy we're looking for?"

An exasperated sigh. "Hell, I don't know. This whole thing's so messed up it's like I'm back in ninth grade Chemistry."

"You're right though." John clicks the mouse a few times and examines the screen. "Says here Simmons was a PE teacher when he died who 'enjoyed a weekly game of tennis or squash.' Hardly likely to be centuries old, is he?"

Sam's pen runs out mid-line but it doesn't matter, there's only two names left. He reads them out and thinks. "Emrys Pendragon, Anita Pritchard. Pendragon, Pritchard."

"Pendragon isn't coming up with any results. There's no records of him. Or of the Pritchard girl. It's a dead end."

"Nothing?" says Dean. "Any social network accounts? Or… whatever old people do on the internet."

Sam muses. "You ever heard of the name Emrys? What is it, Welsh or something?"

John types the name out. "According to…. ' ,' it means…." He taps in a few more words. As he's looking at the screen, his face changes, hand suddenly stilling on the mouse. He sits back in the chair.

"What is it?"

"Immortal." John gives a disbelieving laugh and rubs his face tiredly. "Emrys means immortal."

"Looks like we found our guy," says Dean.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: Thanks for the feedback. :D Slightly shorter chapter this time. _

* * *

After the revelation of Emrys Pendragon, John texts Sherlock to tell him what they've found, and to come back to the apartment (but John calls it a flat, a fact which Dean takes upon himself to mock).

When the door of the apartment opens fifteen minutes later and Sherlock enters, there is a conspicuous lack of Castiel beside him.

"Tell me everything you've found out about this man," says Sherlock as soon as he passes the threshold, sweeping over to them.

"Wait a minute." Dean gets up. "Where's Cas?"

Sherlock sees the paper in Sam's hand and snatches it out, scanning through the names. "He said he had to go. He left as soon as he saw the text."

"Son of a…" Dean cuts himself off and looks up at the ceiling. "Cas, if you can hear this, you better haul your ass down here ASAP." His shoulders drop. "He's not gonna come."

"Dean, he'll be fine," says Sam. _I hope. _

"Yes," says Sherlock absently, going over and now taking the paper that was in front of John. "We'd know if something was wrong because it would affect me."

Sam's brother does not look at all comforted by this.

"Emrys Pendragon…" says Sherlock. He narrows his eyes and bounds around the flat, the sheets scrunching in his hand. It seems to Sam that the man is always either pacing around in a frantic whirr, or stock still with concentration.

"There's nothing on him online." John goes to close the window as a breeze, now cooled by the oncoming night, pushes open the cover of a paperback on the windowsill. "Except for one line saying he's dead. It's like there's no evidence he ever existed."

"Address? Phone number? Have you checked the directory? How about relatives?"

"Yeah, and we got squat," says Dean. "Hey, don't look at me like that, you're not the only person who's had to do some damn research in their life."

Sherlock shuts his eyes for a moment, which Sam at first thinks is just to block out his brother's voice, but then he opens them again and says, as if he's stating common knowledge: "Emrys is the Welsh version of the name Ambrose."

He looks round at them all expectantly. They look back at him. He waits.

"So what?" Dean and John say, at the same time.

Dean blinks. "Hey, don't do that."

John looks away and says "Why is that important? Sherlock?"

"Don't you _see_?" says Sherlock. He walks to the window and then spins around to face them again. "The Arthurian legend, John. It all makes _sense._"

John does not see. "What?"

"In the Monmouth version of Arthurian legend, he combines the leader Ambrosius, who he uses as King Arthur, and Merlinus, used as Merlin, into one name: Merlin Ambrosius, or Merlin Emrys."

"What?" says Dean. And then, for reiteration: "_What_?"

Sam looks a way for a second, but he's pretty sure he saw Sherlock do a little leap of… happiness… out of the corner of his eye. That guy sure gets a kick out of solving stuff.

"It's so simple!" says Sherlock. "Two names, combined. Two people, linked together. And now there are four of us."

Sam's fairly certain that doesn't include him. He's not a part of the Soul Bond Team.

"Hold on, what?" says Dean. "I'm not following."

"I think you're forgetting something, Sherlock," says John with infinite patience.

"Sanity?" says Dean.

John and Sherlock both ignore him. "The Arthur legend is just that – it's a legend. They weren't real people."

"Wait – are we talking about Merlin, as in, old wizard dude Merlin?" says Dean. "He's real?"

John gives him a strange look. "Of course not, that's ridiculous."

"_Think, _John!" Sherlock raises his arms like he wants to shake them out of their apparent stupidity. "Our universes came together to complete the timeline of the person in the original universe. In our universes King Arthur and Merlin are legends, because we _are _them. Different versions of them. They existed in the original universe, Merlin dies, we are put together to fill in their place."

John is staring at Sherlock and his face indicates that he is definitely not on board with this theory. Muttering something about needing another beer, even British beer, Dean heads to the kitchen and they listen to the fridge opening and closing.

"Well?" Sherlock's eyes are wide, his eyebrows aloft with anticipation of praise.

"Sorry," says John (he's not sorry at all, Sam figures that's just something British people say to politely show they think the other person is insane). "Go back to 'we are Arthur and Merlin'."

Dean re-enters the room with a fresh can of beer. "You're saying that-" He stops and concentrates for a few moments. "You're saying that Sherlock and Cas and, uh, _Merlin, _are all connected."

"Yes!" Sherlock's eyes keep flitting about as if he's working out some internal logistics in his head. "The same for you and for John and Arthur."

Opening the beer, Dean says "Oh come on, that's crazy talk." But he doesn't sound very sure of himself.

"Is it, Dean?" says Sam. "If you think about it, it all kind of makes sense."

"Alright, let's say this is true," says John. He brings a hand up his arm to rub his shoulder absent-mindedly. "Not everything makes sense."

"Yeah." Dean takes a gulp of beer. "I thought Arthur and Merlin were from, like, mediaeval times."

"Dark Ages, Dean," says Sam.

"Yeah, well, how can it be that Merlin was alive until, like, a week ago?"

John raises his eyebrows and actually smirks a little. "Immortal? It's in the name."

"Not so immortal though, considering he's dead."

"Is he though?" Sam stands up to stretch. His legs are getting cramp. He turns to Sherlock. "You may not be the same person, but you could be like… a substitute. So in a way, he's still alive in this universe."

Sherlock goes towards him suddenly and for an alarming moment Sam thinks he's going for an embrace, but he stops right in front of him. "Yes, yes, this is good, this is good."

"Alright," says John. "Why now?"

"What do you mean?"

Sherlock's flatmate sounds hesitant, like he's finally giving in to their madness. "Your friend… Castiel, he said that we were here to fulfil the purpose of the original person. Sort of, finishing the role of Emrys and…and 'Arthur'. What purpose is that?"

The room is darkening, the windows no longer providing sufficient light as the day drew to a close. Nobody moves to turn on a lamp. Sherlock paces around the room, apparently unable to give an answer.

"Well…" Dean drains the beer and puts the can down on the floor beside him. A rivulet travels down the metal exterior onto the carpet. "What do we know about the legend of King Arthur?"

Sam's mind flies through sketchy memories of reading stories about the lady in the lake, and Excalibur, and Camelot. It all seems so foreign, part of another world, so far from the life they live.

John clears his throat. "Well, Merlin's role was to guide and help Arthur…" He pauses. "So without Arthur, his role is redundant."

He trails off. "Hang on…" He assumes an expression of deep confusion. "No, you've lost me."

"This is _good, _John!" Sherlock has the most energy of anyone in the room, but somehow Sam doesn't think he's channelling Castiel. "Arthur wasn't immortal, he died in a battle. But now we have a replacement for him – that is, you. And Dean."

"So?"

Sam catches on. Or at least, he thinks he does. "So now there is a Merlin and an Arthur. Merlin's role was to help Arthur, and it still is. He needed to stay alive because-"

"-The legend says he would rise again," Sherlock finishes. "Merlin lived on to wait for the resurrection of Arthur, but Emrys – who is Merlin – died about a week ago, _at the time _when Arthur is brought back, and so instead of their Arthur, we get the replacement Arthur – that is Dean, and John, and Merlin is replaced by Castiel and myself, because the original universe has had its timeline corrupted. Except there are two versions of each person."

"Because it happened too fast," Dean echoes Castiel's explanation from earlier.

There's a silence.

"I still don't follow. It's a little far-fetched, don't you think?" says John.

"Yeah, it's a crazy theory," says Dean. "And I know crazy."

It's starting to get on Sam's nerves, the way they keep agreeing with each other.

Sherlock rounds on Dean. "Then, by all means, divulge to us an alternative, simpler theory."

"Hey." Dean raises his arms in defence. "I didn't say I didn't believe it. All I'm saying is that there's a whole lot of universes and legend in that conclusion, and I'm not convinced all of what you said even made sense."

"Oh, don't I keep _saying, _whatever remains when you have eliminated the impossible-"

"-No matter how unlikely, must be true," says John with the voice of one who has had to recite those words many times before.

"Exactly." Sherlock spins round and flops down onto the sofa into an ungainly sprawl. "I think we should go out for dinner, don't you?"

This is such a one-eighty turnaround from the conversation topic that it takes everyone some seconds to process it. Well, except for John, who is evidently well-versed in the Unpredictability of Sherlock.

"Dinner?"

"Yes. This flat… it's so small. Constricting."

"I'm not really flowing with cash, Sherlock," says John.

"There's a good place about fifteen minutes away. The owner's in my debt."

"Angelo?"

"No, Carlos. I proved that he couldn't have murdered his mother, as she had faked her own death by using someone else's corpse. She was spotted on a cruise ship to Greece two days later." Sherlock gets up and straightens his jacket. "Shall we go?"

"Wait, wait a minute," says Dean. "What about… everything? That we _just _talked about? Am I the only one who thinks it might be kind of important?"

Sherlock goes up to him, calm. "There's no way to progress from here. We don't have enough room. At the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that in some distorted way you are John and I am Castiel, and if I were you I would be more interested in putting an end to it than working out how it happened, don't you think? We will gain nothing from theorising with no evidence, so in the mean time… dinner?"

Dean says nothing.

Sam wants to protest, because _what the hell? _They just decided that his brother is some kind of King Arthur, Version 2.0, and now they're going out to dinner like normal people. That's just screwed up on so many levels.

But he is really hungry.

It's a bizarrely silent, almost sombre procession down the stairs, except for that one creaky step which seems much louder than Sam remembers. Even Sherlock has come down from his mystery-solving high.

Sam reasons to himself that if anything… _happens _to Dean, it's fine as long as John is there as well. As for Cas… he's pretty sure he saw Dean's lips moving as they were leaving, his gaze directed at the ceiling.

"Sherlock?" says John when they're out on the quiet coldish street. There's pools of light from various streetlamps, the occasional person or couple walking past, in and out of the shadows.

"This way," says Sherlock, and sets off down the sidewalk. It's reminiscient of a few days previously, when Castiel directed Sam and Dean through the streets of London.

"Got to say," says Dean, evidently eager to break the silence. "The soul connection thing-" (This is now Dean's official name for it, for lack of better phraseology) "-It doesn't seem to be affecting me and John too badly. Well, I don't know about you, anyway."

"The shared memories seem to be limited to dreams," says Sherlock from the front of the group. "It's likely to change if the connection continues to exist."

John sighs. "Yes, thank you, Sherlock."

"That's not going to happen though," says Dean. "We'll break the bond before…. Whatever happens if we don't. We've been in situations way worse than this, eh Sam?"

Sam keeps his eyes on the kerb. "At least we had something to fight."

"We do-"

"What if there's no solution?"

Dean pulls a face. "Well, you're a ray of sunshine today." His tone is casual, but he's starting to limp. And John is not. John's not even got his damn cane. "Might be cool. I might get a British accent."

Sam rolls his eyes and gives in to his brother's lame attempts to lift the mood, even if neither of them are feeling it. "Yeah, we'll get you a monocle."

And the four of them go to Carlos' restaurant and Sam has the first plate of spaghetti in god knows how long that isn't 99% processed and Dean complains about the flowers on the table and it's like some messed-up happy family movie ending where it's all happiness and kittens and despite the fact that they are all phenomenally screwed, Sam starts to relax and think maybe it's not so bad. After all, nothing big has happened and they're all relatively okay, and Dean is fine.

It's all good. It's all fine.

Except then it isn't.

* * *

They're trooping back through the dark streets of the city towards the apartment, and Sam's starting to shiver in Sherlock's shirt when the consulting detective stops.

"Castiel," he says.

Sam and John look at each other and then peer around at the looming shadows stretching down the sidestreets and throwing greyish black across the tall buildings, but the angel is nowhere in sight.

"What about him?" Dean frowns and also searches for a glimpse of a trenchcoat in the grey. "He here? Castiel?"

"Not yet," says Sherlock, voice oddly blank and emotionless. He carries on walking.

Earlier, Dean seemed almost calm in the restaurant, ordering inordinate amounts of wine and then rambling on about cars and the Impala, and then somehow he and John were talking about guns, and it was normal.

Now, in the unexpected cold night of a summer day, the jovial demeanour is dropped, and it's as if the lines of concern are reappearing on his face, even though Sam knows that's ridiculous.

"Why'd you say Castiel then?" says Dean. His voice is louder than normal, possibly due to the wine, and it travels down the road.

"Dean," says Sam softly, but his brother doesn't hear him.

"You sense him or something?" Dean continues. "I wouldn't be surprised if he's standing in the shadows somewhere, like the creepy little nerd angel that he is. You hear that, Cas?"

A couple of girls pass by and give the group a strange look, and when they're behind them they start talking in hushed whispers and giggles.

Sam moves so he's walking beside John. They haven't talked much, but Sam can't really get over the profound weirdness of the idea that John is an alternative to his brother. The doctor glances at him.

"So," says Sam.

"Yeah," says John. "This is all a bit mad, isn't it?"

Sam quashes the absurd urge to offer an apology, as if this is all somehow his fault, but instead he kind of laughs, because why the hell not? "Yeah, it is."

They walk on for a bit more.

"Can I just ask-" Sam says in a rush. "Sherlock said… is there something wrong with your shoulder?"

John gives him an odd look. "I was shot in the shoulder."

"Oh."

"Why?"

For no real reason Sam finds himself checking that Dean and Sherlock are sufficiently further ahead to not be listening. "Sherlock asked about Dean's. Shoulder, I mean."

John begins to say something, but they're interrupted by the abrupt appearance of Castiel in the space between them and the two further ahead, the sudden manifestation of a person from what was air. His trenchcoat looks grey in the low light.

The other pair must have sensed something because they turn. The group comes to a standstill on the sidewalk.

"Cas!" says Dean, stepping forward. "Hey."

"Hello Dean."

It takes the hunter a moment to remember that he's angry at the angel, and his face drops into an annoyed expression. "Damn it, Cas, I told you not to leave!"

Cas looks unaffected. "I'm not under your command." He glances at the rest of them. "I found the soul of Emrys Pendragon. And –"

"Yeah, we know already," says Dean. "I'm Arthur and you're a wizard and souls connected and all that crap."

Tipping his head to one side, Cas observes him for some long seconds. "Yes."

Sam wonders why they can't have this conversation back in the apartment. It's _cold. _

"You see? You didn't have to go risking your angelic ass for us." Deans turns away and makes as if to carry on walking. When nobody moves he looks back and sees Castiel is still watching him. "What?"

The angel's whole body (or his vessel's body) is tense. More so than usual.

"It's started," says Cas. There's something in his expression other than usual grimness – and although it's pretty hard to read Castiel at the best of times – Sam thinks that what he sees in his face is not unlike sadness.

"What has?" says Dean, and John, at the same time.

A streetlamp further up the road is flickering every now and then, causing that portion of the street to blip in and out of sight.

"It's called the fading," says Cas. "Or the fall."

There's a pause.

"What are you talking about?" Dean's pacing now, a mild limp returning, and Sherlock's stock still. "And if you start your sentence with 'our souls are connected' I swear to God…"

"There is only one way to break the connection between the duplicate souls," says Cas, and Sam has every suspicion that he's not going to like what comes next, not at all.

"Which is?"

"Death."

"Well, don't sugarcoat it or anything," says John.

Dean stops pacing about. "What do you mean, 'death'?"

"Dual souls can't exist for long. One of them dies out. Either you or John will have to die. The same applies to Sherlock and I. The stronger version of each soul will survive."

"You talking about _suicide?_" Dean scoffs.

Cas sighs. "If one life is not ended voluntarily, you will eventually be erased. Your identity will erode and your memories and thoughts will begin to merge together." He stares at Dean until the man meets his eyes, and then breaks the contact and looks at John instead. "One of you will fade."

A breeze rushes by and Sam crosses his arms, shuffling from foot to foot. It's late and dark and he's not really processing what he just heard, because he's pretty certain he heard wrong. He heard wrong, he had to hear wrong. This whole thing is mad, John said. And that's what this is. Mad.

"Come on man," says Dean. "There's gotta be another way. Transport us to an identical universe or something."

"I can't. You are tied to this universe now. There is no other way. You will fade." He looks up at them and meets Sherlock's eyes. "You will fall."

The flickering streetlamp gives a last sputter of light and then dies, the bulb dimming and eventually giving in to the blackness.


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N Thanks for the reviews and favourites/follows. Reviews are always appreciated. Hope you enjoy. _

* * *

The next day Sam wakes up on the floor, cocooned in a variety of cushions and a blanket that he vaguely remembers dragging off the chair when he was jolted out of sleep in the middle of the night with four stiff limbs and gave up on sleeping in the armchair.

He rubs his eyes and tries to remember exactly what's going on as he disentangles his legs from the quilt cover.

It's not that he doesn't remember, but maybe it was all a bad dream or fevered imagination, and the scene in the dark London night will disappear and be replaced by reality.

He waits.

It doesn't disappear. It was real.

Oh _god. _

Shutting his eyes again, for some time he just lies there, on the bed of hard red carpet and floppy cushions, and tries to assuage the heaviness that had descended in his chest. He tries not to think about it, focuses on the details around him.

There's a clattering that suggests somebody is in the kitchen. The footsteps are not Dean's. Sam opens his eyes and stares straight upwards at a huge jagged crack on the plaster of the ceiling. The edge of the mantelpiece is in his line of vision and what looks like a skull sticks out from the ledge. _Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio…_

With a groan, Sam lifts his head. Dean's asleep on the couch, having called 'dibs' on it last night. There's a few too many people in this apartment, and it shows.

Sam drops his head back on the cushion and sees Castiel's face looking down at him. He lets out a cry of surprise and scrambles to his feet, almost re-tangling the blanket around his feet. "Cas!"

"Hello Sam."

"Have you, uh, been standing there this whole time?" And by 'there' Sam means the darkened corner of the room. Last night Dean placed Cas on 'angelic house arrest' in an attempt to stop him flying off wherever.

"No. I have also been in the kitchen."

"Right. OK." Sam checks that he is, in fact, still wearing the shirt and jeans from last night. "Cas, can I ask you a question? And this might sound really stupid-"

"You wish to hear that what happened last night was wrong, and that everything is fine?"

Sam brushes hair out of his face. "Yeah."

"Sam." Castiel watches him, and Sam's pretty sure he's doing the reading-your-soul-like-it's-a-library-book thing again. "I would give anything to have things be different. I tried, in Heaven, to find a solution that would not potentially result in your brother's death."

Taking a deep breath, Sam nods and looks away from the angel, down at the carpet. "Thanks, Cas. I know you tried. Thanks for that." He pauses. "Didn't you say that only one of them would die?"

"Dean may live if he proves to have the stronger version of the soul. John Watson will die instead."

_I hope so. _Sam blinks at the sudden ferocity of that thought and feels guilty about thinking it. Is he seriously wishing death on people now? Hopefully Cas didn't hear him think that.

He remembers all of a sudden that Cas is part of this too, as much as his brother. He must be feeling the strain of being linked to Sherlock.

"Castiel…" says Sam, and feels kind of idiotic, because how do you ask an angel if he's okay? He glances at the couch but Dean is dead to the world. "Are you holding up alright? I mean, with all that's going on in Heaven and now this, I mean…"

Castiel stares at him for so long that Sam starts to shuffle about and look around at other stuff, because it's getting pretty awkward and maybe he shouldn't have asked.

"When I was in Heaven looking for the soul," says Cas, and his shoulders actually sag a little bit. "I believed that other angels would notice and begin to trace me. But they didn't."

"That's good, isn't it?"

"No."

Oh. "Why not?"

"They couldn't sense my presence at all. To them, I wasn't even there. I have been _forgotten._" He looks away, towards Dean and back. "That is how I knew that the fading had begun."

"You're fading too?" Somehow this alarms Sam more than he imagined it would, considering Cas has already explained the situation. It hadn't sunk in that the angel, who could blast away demons just by showing his true form, could also be disappearing (not dying, Sam's not gonna use that word for this, not ever).

Dean begins to stir on the couch.

"We will all deterioriate," says Cas as if this is totally obvious and okay. "Considerably so. But only two will recover."

"Yeah, I got that part," says Sam, a little fast. "Sorry, I just…"

"I understand."

"Yeah. Okay. I'm making breakfast. Do you want some? I mean, if you want. I mean, not that you need it. But if you wanted it… not that it's my food. I just… I'll make toast, okay? Okay." As he rambles his way into the kitchen, trying not to make it seem like he's fleeing the sitting-room, and leaves Castiel standing there.

He's reaching for the bread and attempting to focus when he heard Cas say "Hello Dean" in the sitting-room. And then "Dean, is everything… alright?"

There's someone's phone on the counter, locked, which says: _8:04am. _

Sam waits for an unnecessarily long time, holding the bread above the toaster, until he hears Dean say "I'm fine, Cas."

A door opens somewhere in the apartment. As Sam searches for a clean plate he hears footsteps start up, come closer and finally enter the room. Sounds like the way Dean walks, but when he turns around to check the cupboards on the other side, Sam finds himself face-to-face with John Watson.

"Oh. Hi," says Sam.

John just sort of looks at him without really seeing him, then clears his throat and says "Hi" somewhat more softly than expected. His face is pale, the creases in his face more prominent.

"Are you alright?" Sam has a feeling this is a question he'll be asking quite a lot.

The doctor seems disinclined to reply, so Sam weaves around him and finds a plate in one of the cupboards. Just act casual, everything's alright. Then he almost burns himself taking the toast out because it's pretty distracting having some dude just stood there in the middle of the room in a way that reminds Sam of low budget zombie movies.

"Hey, where do you keep the butter?"

Sam waits. He is met with silence. John is staring at the kitchen tiles and doesn't appear to have heard the question.

"Okay. You know what?" says Sam. "Don't worry about it."

The toast's getting cold and it's a bit too black anyway. Sam can't look away from John because it's so damn _creepy. _

After a bit Sam reaches for the plate, turning away from the other man."You know – oh." John has drifted into the sitting-room. "John?"

Sam follows him into the other room, holding the plate of toast. Dean is sitting up on the couch, Castiel standing beside him. He looks bad but the reasons are pretty damn obvious.

"Hey John," Dean says tiredly. Sam almost wants to laugh in disbelief at how casual he sounds. Like _hey, person that might die so that I can live or who might result in my death. Beautiful morning, isn't it? _(And it isn't even a beautiful morning, the clouds are heavier than ever, as if the inordinate amount of water is actually bringing them closer to the ground and compressing everything in between).

When there is no response Dean notices the vacancy in John's expression and frowns.

"John?" Dean turns to Sam. "What's the matter with him?" He pauses and seems to waver, letting out a silent sigh. "Stupid question, huh?"

Sam raises his eyebrows. "Yeah."

His brother goes and stands in front of John, trying to face him eye to eye despite the several inches of height difference between them.

"Hey, you hear me?" he says.

Sam expects there to be no reaction, but John's head jerks upwards a little, and he raises his gaze, though not quite meeting Dean's eyes. "Yes, I hear you."

"Okay." Dean steps back. "We're okay?"

Maybe this will be what it's like, Sam thinks in a morose sort of way. Constant checks that everybody is themselves and heightened paranoia over menial aspects of everyday life. Seeing meaning in every movement, every word. How long will this last, this 'fading'? Days? Months? Years?

"I dreamt," says John. "Of Hell. Again. Worse."

There's a fractional pause. Dean licks his lips. "Yeah? Well, I dreamt of the desert."

John finally meets Dean's eyes, and they look at each other for a minute. Like something has split the tension in the room, the doctor relaxes, no longer stiff and still. He moves back and so does Dean.

"Okay," says Dean to nobody in particular.

Letting out a small humourless laugh, John collapses into the armchair and reaches to the table next to him, then drops his arm. "Got to buy the paper. Where's Sherlock?"

"Still sleeping, I suppose."

Cas frowns slightly on the other side of the room, and vanishes.

In the chair, John reaches into his pocket, takes out a few coins and counts them. He stands. "Back in a bit."

"Wait," says Sam. He puts down the plate of toast that he'd forgotten he was even holding. "Should you go out alone?" (From across the room Dean mutters "Jesus, Sam.") "I mean, if something happens…"

John clears his throat, then laughs as if Sam is being ridiculous. "What's going to _happen? _I'm a grown man!"

"If something happens to you, what happens to Dean?" Sam snaps, and runs a hand through his hair.

"I'm not going to stay in this flat all day just _in case_. I'm not having my life dictated by this – this _madness _about universes and King Arthur!" He moves towards the door and opens it, nearly out.

"Well if you can't put up with it, why don't we end it right now?"says Dean.

His brother has grabbed the gun from the table by the couch and is pointing it at the back of John's head, straight and steady, his voice low and cold.

"Dean, what are you doing?" Sam moves forward, meaning to take the gun off him.

John seems to sense the danger. He freezes in the doorway and his face is blank, stoic. Determined. He turns slowly to face the barrel aimed at his head.

"You know how it is, Sam," says Dean. "Only one of us can survive. Why don't we skip the 'fading'?"

It's worlds away from the late-night conversation Sam had heard only a few days ago. What the hell happened to that?

John watches the barrel with cold disinterest. "You could shoot yourself and be done with it, then," he says.

"I could. Guess it doesn't really matter, if we're the same person." Dean scoffs.

"Dean." Sam raises a hand to the gun but Dean flinches away, never moving his aim from the doctor.

"Why don't you, then?" says John.

Dean looks down at the gun in his hands as if he's considering. Then his hand trembles. He keeps it pointed a few more seconds, then swears and lets the barrel slip down so it's aimed at the ground.

Sam jumps as his brother suddenly flings the gun onto the couch, where it makes a small dent in the leather and lies still. Dean turns away towards the windows. Behind him, John picks up the gun and turns the safety back on.

"Jesus Christ," Dean's saying. "Jesus _Christ._"

"Dean?"

"I don't know what happened. I just picked up the gun," he says. He faces them but doesn't look John in the eye. "It's messing with my head."

"It's affecting all of us," says John. "Maybe we should put away the gun."

Dean lets out a long breath. He looks like he's trying hard to keep himself under control, hands balled into fists and body tense. "Might come in handy."

"For what? Killing me?" John doesn't sound angry, just brusque and matter-of-fact. "I'll put this in my room."

"That's not a good idea," says Sam.

"Yeah," says Dean. "Listen, if this thing messes with me, it can mess with you too. Who knows what'll happen?"

"Why does it matter to you?" Once again the tone is reasonable, enquiring. Sam wonders if that's what he's like in soldier mode – all the fear and panic repressed.

"Because I don't want anybody to die!" Dean struggles to keep his voice down, looks towards the hallway. "I wasn't…. I wouldn't have pulled the trigger. I don't want to kill you, damn it."

The room darkens as light is blocked by more clouds in the sky outside, giving the impression of it being late afternoon rather than the brightness expected with the beginning of a day.

"I should apologise," says John. "For what I said."

"Oh – no, it's cool, I mean I was –"

"You were pointing a gun at me."

"Yeah." Dean rubs the back of his neck and looks away.

John straightens and clears his throat, and Sam stares and wonders what the hell just happened.

"Nobody should have the gun," the doctor says.

"Get rid of it," Sam suggests. Because, you know, he'd rather not have to find his brother in a living-room shoot-out for a second time.

John shakes his head. "No, it's my service pistol. I'd rather not."

After a moment's thought, the man removes the ammunition and looks at the four cartridges in the palm of his hand. He frowns and looks around for somewhere to put them. Eventually he shrugs and puts the unloaded handgun back on the table. "I'll throw them somewhere while I'm out to get the paper."

There's an uncertain silence. Dean's still looking fairly stricken, his mouth pressed in a thin line despite the passive expression.

"Alright," says John quietly. "Back in a bit."

Sam and Dean listen as his footsteps recede down the staircase, hitting the creaky step and then the door slam moments later.

"Are you… okay?" says Sam. Stupid question.

"Shut up." Moving past him, Dean picks up the plate of half-burnt cold toast that Sam left on the table. "I'm fine. You eating this?"

"Dean."

"What?" The hunter takes a bite of the toast and makes a face. "Could have done with a topping."

"Do you want to talk about it?" This is a stupid question too and Sam hardly knows why he asks it, except that he feels goddamn helpless seeing his brother like this.

"About what?"

"_Dean."_

"What, you wanna talk about my feelings?" Dean injects as much disdain as he can around a mouthful of toast. "You know what's happening, Sam. We're not gonna sit around talking about my _emotions_. We're gonna find a solution to this, okay?"

"What if there isn't one?" says Sam. He can hear his voice escalating. "What if I just sit here in this house for months on end watching my brother _die? _You've got to talk to me, Dean, if we want to find a way around it."

Dean slams the plate down on the table, so hard that the second slice of toast nearly slides off the edge. "What do you want me to _say, _Sam? Do you want me to talk about how it _feels _to wake up with not only your own worst memories, but someone else's as well? Or how, sometimes, if I'm tired or just waking up, it takes me a second to remember exactly what my name is?"

"Dean, I-."

"Or how about the fact that I'm randomly getting all sort of weak and lose my train of thought? Or when I realise I don't remember what I just did, but I'm suddenly _limping-"_

"Dean, it-"

"-Or holding a goddamn cup of _tea_? And to know that's it's not just some weird slip-up, it's because the universe is struggling to hold on to my _existence. _And knowing that this is gonna get worse, but I don't know when, or how. Do you want to talk about how that makes me _feel, _Sam?"

"Dean-"

The hunter drops the aggressive stance, instead brings a hand over his face. "Would you stop saying my name already?"

"We'll find a way out of this."

"I know." Dean looks down and picks up the other piece of toast. "I mean, this whole King Arthur thing, it doesn't even make sense, right?"

Last night Sam spent quite some time thinking it through in his head, and he realised that it does make sense, it makes horrible sense in its own way, but he doesn't point that out. In its place he says "You ate my breakfast."

Playing along with the forced topic change, Dean raises his eyebrows and shrugs. Sam lets out a loud sigh, as if the toast could possibly be important to him now.

Their raised voices seem to have drawn Sherlock out of his room. He appears in the sitting-room in what Sam is pretty sure is the same suit he was wearing yesterday.

"Morning," Sherlock drawls. At least _he _seems relatively even keel.

"Hi," says Sam. "Um, sorry if you were sleeping. I mean, if you heard… uh…"

"I wasn't asleep. Your argument was not distracting. It was rather predictable." He settles into an armchair and glances around. "I see John has gone to get the newspaper."

"Uh… yeah."

"Wait a minute," says Dean. "Where's Castiel?" He peers around as if expecting the angel to jump out from behind the desk. "Cas?"

There's a rustle behind Sam and a flood of cool air. "I am here, Dean."

"Where were you?"

"He was with me in my room," says Sherlock. Because, okay, that doesn't sound weird at all.

"We were discussing," says Cas.

"Discussing what?"

"It is not of import." Cas tips his head to one side and stares at Dean. Sam expects him to say something, but instead he squints and then presses his lips into a thin line as if he's seen something.

Reaching into his pocket, Sam says "I'm gonna call Bobby." They should have done it earlier, really. Bobby would have answers.

"I already tried," says Dean. "More than once. He doesn't pick up."

Sam freeze with the cellphone halfway out of his pocket and stares at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean there's no answer, what do you think?"

"Who is Bobby?" says Sherlock. The fingers of one hand drum an endless pattern against the arm of the chair.

Bobby didn't reply? Sam feels hope drifting a little bit further away than it was a minute ago. Every time he thinks he's got a handle on what's happening and where to progress, he's proven wrong and his heart sinks a bit. There's always a way for the Winchesters, there will be a way.

"He's, uh-" Sam looks away from Dean and down at the cellphone. "He's a friend of ours."

"Perhaps he doesn't exist in this universe," Sherlock suggests calmly.

"What are you talking about? Of course Bobby _exists._ Jesus." Dean turns to Castiel. "Hey Cas, do you reckon you could zap over to Bobby's?"

Without a word, Castiel vanishes.

And re-appears again about six seconds later.

Dean blinks. "You're done? You were gone like, two seconds."

"Yes…" Castiel frowns but it's more irritation than confusion. "I could not get farther than the outskirts of London. There is some sort of barrier. I think I startled a woman in Woking."

"Angels? Sigils?"

"No. Fading. I am becoming tied to this location."

Sam realises the incessant drumbeat of fingers on the armchair has stopped. Sherlock is breathing hard and his hand grips the fabric of the chair. He looks nauseated. As Sam watches, his breathing evens out and his hand relaxes.

"Are you alright?" says Sam.

Sherlock jerks his head into a nod. "I felt his departure."

"You were fine last time." Dean's skepticism comes across as thinly veiled panic.

"Then the connection is indeed deepening," says Sherlock. "It's very simple."

Dean sighs. "So I guess Bobby is out of the picture. Well, that's just great."

All at once the apartment feels claustrophobic, the room too cluttered with random objects – a skull, an empty gun, old newspapers, endless pieces of paper, a violin, a Bible, blankets and cushions on the floor, plates and laptops and phones and all these things that belong to other people, other lives, and most of all there are too many people in the room, too many things going on, too many questions in Sam's head, too much.

"I'm going out," says Sam. "For air." A part of him wants to stay, because what if something happens and he's not there? What if Dean needs him? But worrying like this all the time is going to send him mad.

"Yeah, alright," says Dean. "What about breakfast?"

"I'll have it when I get back." Sam heads towards the door, and hesitates. "You'll call me if anything… happens? I mean-"

Dean snorts. "Just go already, Samantha."

He's taken a step out of the door when Sam hesitates again. "Should I take keys? I mean-"

"On the mantelpiece," Sherlock says with supreme disinterest.

"Thanks." He goes and picks them up and puts them in his pocket with the phone. "OK. Bye then."

"Yeah, bye." Dean is already turning away when Sam exits. Sam can hear him saying "He's going to go and nerd out at all the old stuff, this city is like one giant Christmas present for him."

Sam rolls his eyes as he descends the stairs, opens the door and steps out into London.

* * *

About thirty seconds after the door shuts behind him, Sam remembers that London is _one huge-ass place _and he has no map and no clue where to go.

Regardless, he sets off down the busy street. Cars are careening by, creating a constant background _whoosh _sound, and every car that passes him causes a faint warm wind to brush up specks of dust and dirt and odd pieces of garbage.

Everything is so… normal. People push past on their cellphones or holding suitcases and looking generally kind of grim, but it's great. It's normal life.

Must be nice.

Taking a deep breath, Sam goes up to the nearest person. It's a middle-aged woman talking into her phone in a strong Jamaican accent.

Sam waits for her to finish the call, and makes an awkward sort of little wave when she spots him, to get her attention. She tells the person on the phone that they _can wait _and _will wait _and _don't fiddle with the oven, _and slides the gadget into her jacket pocket. "Yeah?"

"Hi," says Sam. "Do you know where the nearest library is?"

She smiles politely. "Yes, it's on Beaumont Street."

"Great!" The name means nothing to him. "Uh, how do I get there?"

"Go down the road, turn left, keep going, then take a right when you see the sign."

"Right. Thanks." Sam repeated the directions under his breath. _Down, left, right. Down, left, right. _

"Hey-" The woman peers at him a bit. "Are you okay?"

"Uh, yeah." Sam frowns. Maybe he should have taken a minute to brush his hair this morning. "Why?"

"You just look stressed. I thought you were gonna be one of those people asking me for 50p to phone their long-lost cousin in Sydney or something."

Sam gives a half-grin. "I'm fine, really." He circumnavigates her with a muttered 'thanks for the directions' and strides down the street.

Fifteen minutes later he's inside the library, and it's not looking promising.

He sits at a table with a load of old hardback books around him retrieved from the darker, more untouched sections of the place, and he _would _be annoyed at forgetting to bring a notebook and pen, except none of the books are the least bit useful.

If he's honest with himself, he didn't expect to find the answer in a public library. It's not exactly housing a Bobby-style range of books on the occult and even less on anything approaching universe-blending.

Sighing as he flips over the thick page and finds himself at the end of another paragraph that proves to be a false lead, he shuts the book and adds it to the pile. Then he stands and goes over to the sign that says _Help Desk._

"Can I help you?" says the person behind the desk, a girl about nineteen or twenty with tattooes all down her arms.

_Probably not. _"Yeah," says Sam. "Can you tell me where the nearest library to this one is?"

The next library is filled with mothers and children having some sort of storybook event going on, and Sam finds nothing.

The next library is further out and almost empty, but still nothing.

And so it goes on.

By twelve, Sam has followed so many different directions that he's completely lost, wandering around the outskirts of some park called 'St. James Square' and his feet hurt from all the to-and-froing around the city.

And still he's found nothing.

He finds a bench and sits. Frustration is tied like a knot in his belly, making him simultaneously restless and not knowing what to do or where to go.

Really, he doesn't know why he didn't tell Dean where he was going. But to be fair, Sam didn't know where he was going until he left the damn apartment. Sam can't take being stuck with no solution. No such thing as no way out and all the other stupid cliché lines people said in the movies.

What if there is no way out?

Sam rubs his thumb against the wood of the bench, where someone's written _R.W + A.P _in Sharpie. He envisions his brother slowly deteriorating before his eyes, losing memories from day to day and taking on more of the mannerisms of John, becoming a stranger over time, the gentle destruction of an existence.

Or maybe it would be faster. At first there's Dean and then one day he just collapses on the carpet, unable to carry on, falling to pieces and.. and what? Dies? Disappears angel-fashion?

It won't come to that. _(Maybe it will be John who dies, would that be preferable? What would the knowledge do to Dean?)_

Stress builds up into a dull throb at his temples. A mother ushers her children forward across the park, but they break free and run around, screaming as they chase each other.

His cellphone starts ringing. He reaches into his pocket and flips it open. "Yeah?"

"Sam." It's Dean. "Where the hell have you been, man? You've been gone, like, four hours. Just how much 'air' did you have in mind?"

Scuffing his shoes against the soft yellowing grass, Sam says "Dude, I must have taken a wrong turn or something."

"What, you're lost?" There's a mix of annoyance and amusement in the tinny voice.

"Yeah."

"For four _hours_? Look, you'd better haul your ass back pronto. Something's happened to John."

"What do you mean?"

"You'd, uh, you'd better just come and see."

Sam stands, looking around to see which park exit seems the most promising. "That might take a while."

"Where are you?"

"Uh… St. James Park." Sam's pretty sure he's stumbled into the posh part of the city. All the buildings are massive and formal-looking and he's seen an inordinate amount of sombre people in suits walking by.

There's a pause. It sounds like Dean's holding the phone away, because there's the sound of some distant mutters.

There's a crackle as he comes back. "Okay – no, wait-" His voice becomes faint again and there's some raised voices. "Okay. I think we got it under control though, don't worry. But anyway, Sherlock says you go out the second entrance, then right, left, right, left, right, left, right, up, left, right, up. Got that?"

"Dean, wait-" Sam sighs as his brother hangs up, and lets the hand with the phone drop to his side. "Thanks a bunch."


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: Thanks for the reviews, guys. They do help as motivation. xD _

* * *

Sam arrives back at 221B almost an hour later, with a drumming pain behind his forehead and the dissatisfaction of a journey and a morning wasted.

As soon as he's through the door into the sitting-room he says "What happened?"

"What took you so long?" Dean's perched on the edge of a chair holding a can of the beer he says he hates, while John sits in the armchair opposite looking like he went ten rounds with a tree.

Sam makes a face. "Your directions did. What happened?"

Dean leans back, balancing the beer on the edge of the chair. "John had an episode."

"An 'episode'?"

"I'm fine now," John mutters to his lap. He's resting his head against one hand, and with the other hand rubs the bridge of his nose.

"He went all weird again, forgetting stuff and going all Survival Mode on us."

John raises his head. "I don't know what happened."

Did this mean John was 'fading' quicker than Dean? Sam runs his fingers through his hair.

There's the scraping sound of a stool on tiles from the kitchen. Sherlock's hunched over a microscope, surrounded by a series of petri dishes and the vials with questionable substances. Next to him stands Castiel (has he been standing in the flat all morning?). Neither of them look in the least bit concerned about the conversation in the sitting-room.

"Okay," says Sam. "So how do we stop it happening again?" He asks because he still won't accept the idea of no solution, even though with all the research he's done that morning he himself is the most qualified to answer that question.

"You can't," says Castiel from the kitchen.

"There must be a way to deal with it, _something._" Dean takes a swig of the beer and lets the empty can roll onto the table, a droplet falling onto the newspaper beneath and soaking into the paper.

"Assuming the deterioriation is carried out biologically," Sherlock says as he adjusts the settings of the microscope. "And that the total time of deterioration is no more than a month – and that it has already gone on for a week, that leaves us a maximum of three weeks. If in that time we managed to discover what exact molecular or biological changes were taking place, accounting for the variation of symptoms, it wouldn't leave enough time to find medication that could combat the symptoms on a purely physical scale, or to discover if medication would be in the least bit affective in a situation such as this."

"Yes, thank you, Sherlock." John sighs.

Dean sits up. "Hey, who says we've only got a month?"

"Time will attempt to correct itself as soon as possible to prevent any further corruption of the timeline." Castiel moves forward so he's in the doorway between the kitchen and the sitting-room. "Even if you have longer, it is safer to assume you have no more than a further three weeks."

John glances upwards and Sam can see a steely glaze settle over his eyes, like Dean when he's plunged into a battle situation. "You mean, that two of us have no more than three weeks."

"Safer still is to act as if each day was the last," says Cas.

Dean snorts. "What are you, Nickelback? You're saying to live as if today is our last day?"

"Yes."

There is a pause.

Fiddling with the wooden arm of the chair, Dean says "Okay, well, that still doesn't tell us how to deal with it. What to do."

Castiel's shoulders sag. Perhaps the fading is taking more of a toll on him than Sam can see. He hopes not. "You must try… not to forget. John forgot. It will happen again."

"We're not gonna _forget,_" says Dean. "Look, give me a piece of paper."

Finding a blank page on the desk by the laptop, Sam fishes a pen out of the mess and hands them to his brother. He watches his brother rest the page on his knee and scrawl:

_Dean Winchester. Hunting. Sam. _

"These are the important things," he says when he's done. He folds it up and puts it in his pocket.

Seeing what he's doing, John asks for his own piece of paper, which Sam gives him. He rests it neatly on the table, and writes:

_John Watson, medic. Location: 221B Baker Street. Friend: Sherlock Holmes. _

"Sometimes it helps to have trigger words. They help aid memory. Assuming that the memory isn't being destroyed, just repressed…" John taps the pen against his chin thoughtfully, and adds _Afghanistan. Harry. _

Deans unfolds his paper again and adds: _Castiel. _

Picking up several more sheets, Sam turns to the other two. "Do you want some as well?"

"No thank you." Sherlock's been staring at the same slide under the microscope the whole time. Sam doubts he really finds it that fascinating. "I can use my Mind Palace, if the situation should arise."

"Mind Palace?" Dean gets up and passes Castiel to get to the fridge. "Anyone want lunch? I'm starving."

"It's an…" John waves a languid hand around. "Ancient Greek thing. There's some ready-mades in the freezer." He stands, slowly. "Right. Suppose I'd better get on with some research."

"I'll join you," says Dean, unloading packets onto the counter and peering at the labels. It has been a long time since Sam has seen Dean attempt an oven.

Castiel moves into the sitting-room and observest the goings-on with vague interest, though his expression remains resolutely downcast. "I doubt you'll find anything."

"Throw us a rope, would you, Cas?" says Dean. "I know it's hard but excuse me if I'm not so keen to accept my death sentence just yet."

"Hopefully it won't come to that," says John, who appears to have developed a matter-of-fact mentality to the whole situation. "There may be an anwer we're missing."

Castiel looks like he doubts this very much, but doesn't say anything else. He doesn't really seem to know what to do with himself, going from room to room and finding a spot and standing there until he finds cause to go somewhere else. Sam briefly wonders where he would be going if he wasn't 'tied' to this location, as he put it.

"Anyway, I've felt fine. I haven't gone all cracked like John did." Dean's now got his head inside the oven, breaking a variety of health and safety regulations.

John does not seem thrilled. "Glad as I am to hear that..."

Removing his head from the oven, Dean's face remains turned away from Sam. "Hey, you're not gonna die. Well, probably not. Nobody is going to _die _here." It feels like a lie, no matter how much Sam tries to believe it. "And three weeks is a long time."

"Mmm." Sherlock leans back from the microscope and grabs his phone from the counter, checking for something and sliding it into his pocket. "The question is… is it long enough?"

"Long enough for what?"

The detective's face remains impassive. "Long enough to handle the failure of trying to research your way out of this… long enough to learn how to die."

* * *

Sam learns fast that the so-called corruption of a timeline is not as dramatic as he imagines: there are no explosions, no blood pouring from the sky and history folding in on itself like something out of an overambitious sci fi show.

It's subtle. Just as Dean and John start to _fragment, _so their unravelling is reflected in the day.

The first sign is the next day. Day 1 of 21, if Castiel is to be believed.

John insists on going out to buy the newspaper, despite the danger that he – or anyone – could have an 'episode.' Sam thinks it might be his way of coping with the madness, latching on to a normal part of everyday life and sticking to it when all else is going against reason.

The day is greycast, the clouds spilling not all at once in a downpour, but in erratic showers that don't lift the hazy humidity of the atmosphere. Sherlock spends a lot of time on his science experiments, whatever they may be. In fact, he seems remarkably relaxed about the whole affair, and if he's experiencing symptoms, he's not showing it. Nor is Castiel. Sam's not sure what to make of that.

The door opens with the sound of jangling keys and John appears. He tosses the paper onto the armchair and goes to lean his cane against the wall.

Sam picks up the newspaper. On the table beside is yesterday's, and underneath that one is all the old ones Dean went through for obituaries. Probably they should clear it out, but it's not an effort anybody seems prepared to make.

He looks at the date and blinks. He had the date wrong in his head. He looks at the other newspaper to make sure, and stops. He picks that one up as well, and looks from one to the other.

"John," he says.

"Yes?"

"There's something wrong with this newspaper."

"What do you mean?" John comes over and inspects the front pages over Sam's shoulder. His voice is hoarse, like he's coming down with a bad sore throat.

"The dates are the same."

"So? It's a typo, isn't it? It…" With a sound of dawning realisation, John takes one of the newspapers from Sam and holds it up, glancing at the other one. "How has this happened?"

Dean enters the room, a beercan in his hand. He's rarely seen without one now. Coping strategies for the Winchesters are not healthy. "How has what happened?"

"Some of the articles are the same," says John. "But it's not the same newspaper. Some of these were in yesterday's paper, word for word, some weren't."

"Look," says Sam. One paper has headlines saying _UKIP leader steps down. Will it be a girl or a boy? Employment increases. _The next reads _Memoirs given millions of advance. UKIP leader steps down. Employment increases._

"That's weird." Dean shakes his head and takes a gulp of beer. His hand is shaking as he raises the can to his mouth, and it doesn't stop. "It's like yesterday is repeating itself."

Sam doesn't want to think about having to go through _that _particular experience again. "It's more like… one day on top of another."

"Cas, you know anything about this?" Dean turns to Castiel, who is standing with Sherlock by the kitchen counter. They spend a lot of time in the same area, he and Sherlock, but Sam doesn't see them talking very much. Unless they've got some freaky telepathy soul-bond thing going on.

In an instant, Castiel blips into the sitting-room, which Sam would find impressive (as he always did, because… well, because it was awesome) if it weren't for the fact that the angel landed on the floor, in an awkward side-sprawl.

A flicker of concern passes over Dean's face and is replaced by a scoff. "Smooth moves you got there, Cas."

Castiel gives a sort of huff of annoyance, and stands up, ignoring Sam's outstretched hand. "I can no longer fly," he announces.

"No kidding."

The angel frowns. "When I try to fly… I now fall. It is… unpleasant." He glances at the newspapers that John and Sam are holding. "It's like I said. Time corruption."

"What, because of _us_?" says Dean, sounding almost impressed.

"Essentially, yes."

There's a pause. Sam watches Dean. His brother's frame is trembling very slightly all over, not like fear or excitement but like uncontrollable mild shivering. His limp comes and goes.

John stares at the front page with fascination.

"That's awesome," says Dean.

Cas looks at him. "It may be 'awesome,' but it also means that we are coming closer to the end."

"Alright, I get it already." Dean sounds joking but it's tinged with irritation, tension. He's shaking harder now, and puts the beercan down on the table as it slips down through his fingers. "We're all gonna die, nothing we can do about it, do I have to keep being reminded of it every two seconds?"

Sam jumps as his phone starts ringing. He exchanges an unspoken _Bobby? _with Dean and takes it out his pocket.

"Yeah?" There's silence except for crackling on the other end of the phone. Cold caller? On a cell phone? "Hello?"

He's about to hang up when he hears a distant voice say "Sam."

"Yeah? Who is this? Bobby?"

The voice sounds like it's coming from far away and echoes, and is covered by a loud hissing and crunching, as if there's barely any reception. "W-where the… you…"

Something's very familiar about it. "I can't hear you. Who is this?"

"Sa-am." Another pause. "Where the hell y-you…. Man…"

It feels as if Sam has been unexpectedly doused in cold water as he listens to the voice repeat itself, sound coming in and out despite having great signal. He holds the phone away and gazes at it and at Dean, then listens again. "Uh…."

"Y-you been… been man. Where…"

His heart is thumping. "Dean?"

"Yeah?" says Dean, standing in front of him. Everybody else in the apartment is silent, drawn into the one-sided conversation.

Sam stares at him. "You're on the phone."

Dean gives him a Have-You-Lost-Your-Mind Look, so Sam holds out the cell phone to him. He takes it. "Hello? Me? Hello? I…" He hands the phone back. "They hung up."

"Did you hear it?" says Sam, going to his Call History on the cell phone screen.

"Only for like, two seconds. It said what sounded like 'musta taken' and then just went dead. Weird."

"What? That's not what I heard." There's no record of any call since Dean's call yesterday at midday.

"It sounded like you, Sam." Dean sounds like he's been taken by a wave of fatigue. He collapses into the armchair and picks up the beer again.

"Maybe there's something wrong with the phone," says John. He too, sounds weary and his voice croaks a bit. Him and Dean look at each other with a dull sort of acknowledgement of the similarity. John's gaze drifts to the mantelpiece where he's placed the piece of paper he wrote his 'trigger words' on.

"You feeling kind of shaky and weak?" says Dean.

John sighs. "Muscle weakness, yes. And my shoulder… I'm getting some sort of scar on it." He reaches to rub it.

Sam moves further away because some how it feels like intruding. But he can't help but listen as he goes into the kitchen, where Sherlock is writing out facts about an element of the periodic table onto a sheet (sometimes he repeats something, sometimes it looks like he's not paying attention to what he's writing).

At John's word Castiel blinks and looks more alive and alert than he has in days, weeks, the bright interest in his eyes so sudden that Sam hadn't even noticed that he was tiring, diminishing before him. The angel goes to John.

"Show me," he says.

John looks like he wants to argue, but Castiel packs more authority in two words than the rest of them combined when he wants to.

The doctor undoes the top few buttons of his dark grey shirt, enough to let the fabric slide down over his left shoulder. There's some faint red marks, causing the skin to swell in places. Though it's indistinct, it somehow resembles the shape of a handprint, like when somebody presses their palm against a windowpane and watches the misty stain disappear.

Balking, Dean stands so fast he almost trips over the edge of the chair, bringing a hand to his own shoulder.

Castiel observes the mark. Then he raises his arm and reaches to it.

"What are you doing?" John flinches out of the way.

"Trying to see…" The angel furrows his brow. "Let me."

This time, John stays still, if somewhat tense, and lets Castiel's hand go to his shoulder. For a second his hand just hovers over the mark, and Sam realises that the handprint fits his perfectly. Then Castiel puts his hand over them.

It might be Sam's imagination, but he could swear a jolt runs through the air, like a glorified shock of static electricity, a faint hum in his ears. His hair rises on his arms and then abates.

Both John and Dean jump. Dean clamps his hands over his ears and crumples to his knees, and John is shaking so hard it's a wonder he's still on his feet. Castiel is breathing hard, shutting his eyes as if fighting some huge force, and then-

It's over. Castiel removes his hand from John's shoulder and the intensity is gone.

John wipes his brow, but his hands are shaking so much it takes two goes. He can barely get his words out. "That was – I saw – I saw – what was that?"

Staggering to his feet, Dean says "That your true voice again, Cas? It sounded like, I don't know… a thousand tornadoes decided to take place in my head or something."

"What did you see?" Castiel asks John.

"I – um, god, I don't know. Red. Like the dreams of Hell, but everything was… rushing. There was black, as well. And grey."

"I was trying to tap into the bond between Dean and I, through you," says Cas. "It took more effort than expected."

"Okay, great." Dean checks his beercan to see if there's any left. "Just another way to show how connected we all are. That's getting old, you know."

Sam becomes aware of a murmuring from the kitchen from the counter. The detective must like that spot, he's been there all morning. Sherlock has been sitting at that counter an awfully long time. Like, a _really damn long time. _

Sherlock is hunched over, muttering something to the counter, and it seems to Sam as if he has his eyes screwed shut. It almost looks like he's suffering from some invisible pain.

"Sherlock?" says Sam. He considers asking if he's alright but that question's getting pretty redundant.

The man's head is almost touching the counter, and he's rocking back and forth very slightly. Sam reckons he heard his name, because for a second his head turns and the detective flashes wild, glassy eyes on him.

"Sherlock? Do you wanna… come into the sitting-room?" Sam gets closer, with some vague idea of keeping everyone contained in the same room to get better control of everything going on.

Now he can hear what Sherlock is saying. "Who am I? Who am I? What is this… what is this… I can't… I _am… _What is this?"

There's movement in the doorway. Castiel is there, watching Sherlock with what can only be described as sorrow.

"Cas!" says Sam. "Can you help him?"

The angel shakes his head. "His soul is fighting against my Grace. My existence… crushes his. The nearer I am to him, the weaker he becomes. But trying to separate is… painful. For both of us."

So that was why they were always hanging around the same area the last couple of days.

"I am _Sherlock, _I am… what is this? Who am I? It's wrong. What is this? The link… breaks. The link… breaks. The link… breaks. Who am I? John. John. Who am I?" There's a crash as the consulting detective slams his head against the counter with enough force to make the petri dishes rattle. "It's all _wrong, _why is it _wrong_?"

He moves to slam his head again so Sam rushes over and grabs one of his arms, wrenching it behind his back and using it to hold him away from the counter.

"Stop! Sherlock! Your name is Sherlock!" Sam tries to stop him overbalancing on the stool. "Dean, John! Help me out here!"

Sherlock is saying "Don't you understand, it has to be this way… what is this?" while he tries to fight Sam off, twisting around off the chair until Sam is shoved against the table. A vial topples off the counter and smashes into three pieces.

"Dean! John! Help me here!" Sam tries to untangle his feet from the tipped-over legs of the stool. "_Now!"_

He can hear some kind of crash in the sitting-room and then Dean appears, leaning against the edge of the doorway. He looks pale.

When he sees the commotion he goes over to them and grabs Sherlock's other arm. "What the hell's going on?"

"What do you _think?" _says Sam, struggling to keep the man still. After some time Sherlock stops fighting against them, his eyes vacant. He's covered in sweat. "Let's take him into the sitting-room."

They half-shove Sherlock towards the other room. He seems to be trying to walk but is having trouble finding his feet. At least he's not taking up his headbanging tendencies anymore.

In the sitting-room Dean lets go and collapses on a chair, panting, after it becomes clear Sherlock's not going to do anything else, and Sam sits him on the edge of the couch. Castiel moves to the other end of the room.

John's on the floor, rubbing his face and gripping the carpet for balance so hard his knuckles are white, by the chair where he was sat, so Sam surmises his fall was the source of the crash.

When he catches sight of Sherlock, head in his hands and emitting a tired groan, he grabs the chair and drags himself upright.

"Sherlock…." He stumbles forward a few steps. "What happened?"

Sam goes to help John as it looks like he might fall over again. "Woah, are you okay? He's fine, he just… uh…" _Went insane? _"He had an episode. Look, don't get up, you look like you should sit down."

Shaking him off, John tries to lurch forward in the general direction of his flatmate. He careers into the end of the couch and uses his hands to lower himself into the space beside. Sherlock has not moved. "I have to see… Sherlock, are you alright? Sherlock?"

"John." Sherlock's face is partially obscured by his dark curls and he doesn't look up.

There's a heavy pause as John tries to focus, massaging the bridge of his nose and leaning forward to see Sherlock's face. Doctor Mode. "Do you remember your name?"

"Sherlock," he says in a harsh whisper. He clears his throat and repeats it. "Sherlock."

"OK. Good."

Sherlock looks up, but not at John. He stares towards the window, where a dull light shines through. "John."

"Yes?"

"John, this… it's all wrong." He sounds emotionless but at the same time urgent.

"You're telling me," John mutters. "What's all wrong?"

In one movement Sherlock turns and meets John's eyes, uncomfortably close, grabbing his arm so tightly that the doctor has to grip the leather of the sofa to avoid falling off.

"John," he hisses.

John attempts to prise his hand from his arm, but his movements are weak. "Yes?"

"I know _everything_."

"Sounds about right," says Dean from across the room. Everybody ignores him.

"John," says Sherlock. He barely blinks. Sam's a little unnerved. "If I concentrate… I can _fly._"

Giving him a Look, John says "Sherlock, you can't fly. Let go of my arm. _Sherlock._"

Sam looks to Castiel for confirmation that the guy has not in fact, developed the same angel teleporting powers. The angel sighs. "He can't. He thinks he's me. Or a part of him does."

At the sound of his voice, Sherlock looks up and sees Castiel. His eyes go wide, as if he's realised something earth-shattering. "_You!" _

Castiel says nothing. He's as close to the opposite wall as he can get, presumably to prevent the consulting detective getting any worse.

Sherlock's eyes narrow. He looks completely demented. "Come here." Castiel tilts his head in response. "_Come here." _

"Why? It will weaken you." The angel looks strained, and fidgets on the spot as if it's difficult not to obey the order.

The other man stands. He doesn't look weak at all. "_Good." _

"What the hell are you talking about?" says Dean.

"Come here," says Sherlock, his eyes fixed on Castiel, who shuts his eyes and murmurs 'No' to himself. It's almost as if Sherlock has some sort of control over him.

At once, Sherlock snaps into some semblance of normality, eyes no longer squinting and stance relaxed. "It makes sense," he says conversationally. "Come forward."

"Sherlock, stop," says John, swaying to his feet and reaching for his friend's arm. "This isn't you. This is the connection. It's trying to kill you. It wants you to die."

The normality is gone, the madness returns. "_I want to die." _

"No, Sherlock…" John tugs at his sleeve. "Listen to yourself."

Like Castiel is no longer in command of his own actions, the angel takes a small hesitant step forward, opening his eyes and raising a hand to indicate stop, but it's not clear if that's for Sherlock or himself.

At the movement, there's a _frisson _in the air, similar to when Cas put his hand on John's handprint scar. A wave of energy, barely detectable.

"Cas," says Dean, also trying to get to his feet, though his face goes white at the movement. "Stop."

"Closer," says Sherlock.

Brows furrowed at some apparent internal pain, Castiel shakes his head. "No. I don't want to hurt you."

A cloud parts outside, and the light entering the room brightens a marginal amount, the sun through the windowpanes reflecting bright off their faces.

"You can't stop me." Sherlock smiles, an arrogant _normal _smile. He raises his eyebrows. "Try."

And he starts walking towards the angel. Castiel backs away, but there's only wall behind him. He looks alarmed, and it's not a look Sam sees often on his face, nor one he hopes to see again.

Castiel raises his hand to try and keep his distance, stumbling backwards into the kitchen as Sherlock keeps coming closer. The detective follows, shoes crunching over the broken shards of the smashed vial.

Following him into the kitchen, Sam tries to get hold of Sherlock again to pull him back, but the man is on the move.

"Come on," Sherlock says to Castiel as the guy stops at the far wall.

In a flash, the panicked look slides off his face and Castiel's expression goes hard and blank. He stands still, puts his hands in his pockets. "Fine."

"Castiel, what are you doing?" says Sam, momentarily distracted from his aim of subduing Sherlock.

Sherlock walks forward, the flicker of a triumphant smile on his lips. When he gets to about three metres away, he hesitates, a shudder passing through him. He coughs and takes another step. Castiel watches.

At the next step, Sherlock gives an awful moaning gasp and grabs his chest, coughs harder. The angel's face, too, is becoming taut, teeth gritted, but he makes no move to get further away.

Slowly now, the man takes another couple of steps, one hand at his chest and one going to his temples. The whole room feels full of static energy that makes Sam feel shaky on his feet.

When there's about a metre left, Sherlock tries to move forward again and there's a ringing pulse of force that send him flying backwards, hurtling into the cupboards. He collapses onto the ground groaning, his hands dropping to his sides.

Sam checks that the guy is still breathing. "Castiel…"

Castiel's face is cold. "Something inside us… the universe… time knows that this is wrong. It's trying to kill us off until it's put right again."

Sam can hear Dean in the sitting-room, trying to get up and find the source of the noise. "What's happening in there?" John, too, quieter.

As Sherlock is still conscious, though not enough so to get up of his own accord, Sam puts his hands under the guy's arms and drags him into the sitting-room. There's a grating sound as a piece of glass is carried under Sherlock's shoe, which dislodges when he reaches the carpeted ground of the other room.

Dean's eyebrows rocket up at the sight of Sherlock. "He looks like crap."

"Yeah, well, so do you." Not being able to find the energy required to lug him onto the couch, Sam just leaves him lying in the middle of the room, fetching a cushion for his head. Sam straightens. "That was weird."

Nodding at Cas, Dean says "I heard what you said in there. So, I guess we got ourselves a Battle Royale scenario."

"Sherlock…" John's leaning very heavily against the wall and appears unable to move from that position. Sam goes over to him and all but hauls him to the couch, whether he likes it or not, because he doesn't want to be dealing with two half-conscious people on the floor.

"So what've we gotta do?" says Dean. "Bar the windows in case one of us decides they fancy a sudden drop?"

With a grunt, Sherlock sits up. Although his hair and suit are askew, he appears as normal and sane. He looks around with uncomprehending eyes until he reaches Castiel and utters a faint 'oh.'

Sam waits, prepared to tackle him if he develops any more suicidal tendencies. "Well," says Sherlock in a weak but somehow still drawling voice. "That was a very unexpected angle. Compelling _yourself _to end your life… that's brilliant."

Castiel frowns. "I don't understand your definition of brilliant."

"Are you alright now?" says Sam. He wants to sit down but it seems like every time he tries, something in the universe continuum or whatever, cracks apart and requires him to fix him.

"For now." Sherlock gives a nod, and winces.

"Well, what the hell do we do now?" says Dean. "It's yesterday and today at the same fricking time, something's messing with our heads to try and kill us, and we've got no way to stop it."

"We keep trying," says Sam. Because what else _can _they do? He looks around at their faces that exhibit varying degrees of exhaustion and sickliness. Dean can hardly take more than a few steps before he keels, Castiel's stuck in Sherlock's orbit, John looks halfway to the grave already, and Sherlock's going insane. "I'll keep researching."


	8. Chapter 8

"I need towels! I need a bucket! A bucket, anything! Where do you keep this stuff? Focus, _focus, _please! Come on-"

A cough and another spatter of blood on the carpet. "Under the sink."

"God… the sink…" Sam races into the kitchen, heedless of the glass shards now crushed to crumbs, trying to block out the shouts of pain from the sitting-room. He goes so fast he slides into the cupboard, kneels and flings it open. Detergent, bleach… a bucket. "Got it."

There's more blood when he returns and shoves the bucket in John's red-slicked hands. The doctor moans and tries to sit up, dabbing ineffectually at the stains on his shirt, and on his pants, and on the floor, and freaking _everywhere._

Sam wipes his brow, heads over to Dean, sat with his back against the wall and head down, eyes tight shut. "Dean."

"Hey Sam," his brother says in a low voice.

"You holding up okay?"

"Got one killer headache, but I'm fine…" Dean opens one eye and squints around at the chaos. "Dude, you shouldn't have to do all this-"

"It's fine-"

"-I should help. Where's Cas?"

"I'm here, Dean." The angel is standing beside him, looking like he's been in a war. His coat is specked with blood and dirt and his face covered in grime. Everytime he tries to help and comes closer to John, Sherlock begins to _scream. _

Dean starts to get to his feet. "I gotta help…"

"No! Don't – don't move." Sam pushes him back down and he relents easily.

His brother looks like he wants to protest but instead he grabs his head and lets out a gasp of pain. "God damn son of a bitch," he mutters, though he doesn't seem to be talking to anyone in particular.

Sam leaves him, rolling his sleeves up as he goes to Sherlock, lying on the couch. (John's on the damn bed of cushions and blankets as if that's the same, and Dean refuses to lie down like an 'invalid').

The consulting detective looks like he's shrinking in on himself, so pale it's scary and breathing shallowly. He doesn't sleep exactly – according to Castiel, he's been awake for two nights running), but he lies with his eyelids flickering and his lips mouthing some silent words, all the time.

Feeling his forehead, Sam sighs at how cool and waxy his skin is, glances around as if a spare blanket has somehow manifested itself. He wants Castiel to just come over and do his split-second healing thing, but for the last two days the angel's been forced to the sidelines, his very presence causing greater damage.

There are no evenings anymore. Yet another corruption of time, apparently. Sam waited on that first day at eight, nine, ten, eleven, and darkness did not fall. He measures the day with someone's phone left on the counter, and shuts the blinds when it's ten.

There's a horrible retching noise as John expels another lot of coagulated blood which looks more black than red. It's eight PM and the sun is streaming thinly through the clouds and the windows. The room stinks of unwashed clothes and people.

"You alright?" says Sam.

"Oh god," says John, wiping his mouth and sitting up properly. "Yeah. I think… I'm alright. How's Sherlock?"

"Weak," says Sam.

"He's exhausted. He can't sleep any more," says Castiel.

"What do you mean?"

"He hasn't slept the last few nights, or I would have fallen asleep too."

At that moment a hand grabs Sam's wrist. He jumps and flinches away before realising it's Sherlock, his eyes open. He looks old.

"Sherlock!" says Sam, then, somewhat belatedly: "Do you know what your name is?"

"Sherlock."

"Great." Sam points at John. This is a method he's developed to check everyone's memories are still… well, _there. _"Who's that?"

The man's eyes flicker over to the doctor. "John…"

"Yes-"

"John Winchester."

Sam freezes. "What? No." He reaches for the hand still locked on his wrist. "That's John Watson. _Watson._"

The corner of Sherlock's mouth curls up. "Same thing." His eyes snap to Sam's face. "There is a link."

"Sherlock…" says John, looking pained. When he sets off rambling, it gets difficult to listen to.

"Haven't you stopped to think of the most obvious thing yet?" says Sherlock. He sits up a bit and stares round at them all as if they're all idiots. A minute ago he looked like a corpse, now he's lecturing them. Jesus. "Don't you _see?" _

"See what?" says Dean.

"Arthur," says Sherlock. "Emrys. Arthur. Emrys-"

"What's your _point?_"

"Apparently we are here… like this… because of duplicate resurrections of Arthur. But why would he rise now?"

Sam recognises that he's actually making some sort of sense.

"Well," says John. "The legend says that Arthur will rise again-"

"-When he's needed most, _yes._ And he's risen again now, through us. Don't you _see_, there's a link. John, I am… I am…" And he's gone, lost to some loop his mind has got stuck on while trying to survive.

Dean opens his eyes again, raises his head to meet Sam's eyes. He mouths '_the apocalypse?' _Sam shrugs.

"I should clear this blood up…" says John, biting his lip at the already drying stains, sinking into the fibres of the carpet. "Mrs Hudson will have my head."

"It's fine. Don't get it, you shouldn't get up," says Sam, hovering above him in case he tries to get up. "I've got it."

"I can clear it," says Cas. It's a struggle for him to stand on the sidelines, watching a human's existence get crushed by his very presence in the world.

"Oh - Cas, you don't have to. It's just a stain. It's not a big deal."

The look the angel gives him is unexpectedly intense, and yet somehow dulled by the grim demeanour, the way his head hangs slightly. "He will die anyway."

Sherlock doesn't react, still murmuring to himself, so Sam gives Cas a brief nod. "Try… walk slowly. I'll tell you if he… does anything."

Castiel dips his head in acknowledgement. He takes a few cautious steps and glances at Sam. Sherlock trembles, making his dark curls bob, and his mutterings drift into stiff silence.

Another two steps, and it's like the scene in the kitchen all over again. Sam's jumpy, expecting Sherlock to fly back any minute.

Reaching the first stain, Castiel bends down and touches the carpet, frowning in concentration. The first few spatters disappear, and Sam guesses that he's deliberately restraining his power.

"Can you heal us?" says Dean. "I mean, do your angel mojo thing on the pain? 'Cuz I've got a nail rammed in my skull, I swear to God."

Castiel looks dubious. He takes a small step towards John, and reaches a hand to his forehead. It seems to have no effect on John, but in that split second Sherlock begins to roar in pain, a horrendous screeching yell. His back arches on the couch.

Stumbling backwards, Cas trips over over the edge of the desk and as he lands it seems that he is yelling too, but not yelling, no, instead the windows are rattling as if hundreds of trucks are rumbling past and the whole apartment is filled with freezing wind that lifts papers and brings out goosebumps on Sam's arm. Everyone clamps their hands to their ears. John throws up.

In two seconds it is over and there is silence once more.

"Jesus _christ,_" says Dean.

Sam removes one hand from his ear, and then the other. His head is ringing and he has to blink several times to get a hold of the situation again. Dean's breathing hard and cursing incessantly. Castiel pulls himself to his feet and retreats to his end of the room.

Turning to check that Sherlock is still alive, Sam sees with horror that there's thin streams of blood trickling down from his eyes. He swears and races to the kitchen to find paper towels, but he can't locate them, opening cupboards at random and leaving the doors swinging.

Eventually he stops, puts his hands on the counter and stares at the white surface. He swears again.

He's got to keep it together, he can't fall to pieces with three people dying and one angel pretty well incapacitated. For the last forty-eight hours he hasn't stopped, but neither has the fading. Something's gotta break soon, and it's _not _gonna be Sam.

There's a crunch near the doorway. Castiel has entered. He looks gaunt, blue eyes portrayed by grime and hair sticking in all directions.

"Sam," he says, as if that's all that needs to be said. He takes another step forward and grimaces, steps back again. The loci of Castiel.

"Hey Cas," he says with a weak smile. "Do you know where the, uh, paper towels are? I just… I'm looking and I can't – I can't seem to find them. I know they've gotta be here, but I… I don't see them."

"Sam." The angel tilts his head. "Are you alright?"

He flicks hair out of his eye. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just great, Cas. I just… I need to find these paper towels. But no, I'm good."

Castiel's giving him the Angelic Soul-Searching Gaze, and has a shot at being comforting. "Sam, your brother is currently the strongest of them. John is weaker. I believe Dean will survive."

"But people are still going to _die, _Castiel!" Sam's dangerously close to losing his hold on his emotions. He can't afford to have a _moment _now. "No matter what I do, people are going to die. I don't want John to die, do you see? He's a great guy, he's nice, he doesn't deserve it. But if he doesn't… Dean will. Cas, I just have a problem with that."

"It's not your fault, Sam. You can't stop this."

"I know." Sam blinks hard, swallows. He notices a white roll in front of him and lets out a breathless laugh. "Oh hey look… I found the paper towels."

Castiel sighs. "I wish I could help you."

"Thanks, Cas. I appreciate that." He fiddles with the paper in his hands. "You know, it sounded like you were in a lot of pain back there. You're okay, right? I know you can't help it… what you do to Sherlock."

"I can feel my Grace draining him. It is not pleasant, but it is inevitable."

A shout from the sitting-room of "Sam, is it bad to let blood drip onto leather?" effectively cuts the conversation short.

Sam gives Cas a smile, half apologetic and half sympathetic, heading past him with the roll of towels.

Drops are falling from Sherlock's eyes onto the edge of the couch like red tears, the detective lying on his side. Grabbing a wad of the towels, Sam pats at the drips as they make their way down the curves of the leather like rain down a windowpane. He places the roll in Sherlock's hands when he's done. "You should keep these."

Sherlock looks up at him. "John."

"I'm not John," says Sam.

"I'm here, Sherlock." John tries to get closer to the couch but his hands shake under his own weight. "You shouldn't try and talk. You're ill."

A rattling cough. "An astounding observation."

John rolls his eyes, tries again to sit up. "You know… you're a stubborn prick."

This elicits a hoarse, croaking laugh. John smirks.

"John."

"Yes?"

"I should die... I'm going to die."

"No…" They don't look away from each other's eyes, unable to move closer together. "You're not going to die. We're going to solve this."

"I _know._" His voice is barely a whisper. "We need to go to St. Barts."

"What? Why? Sherlock, you can't go anywhere."

"John… I need to go. It's very important."

Some mutual understanding appears to pass between them, and John gives a nod, even attempts a smile. "We can try." He glances at Sam. "We should go."

"Why?" Sam does not enjoy the prospect of trying to get three sick men plus one angel to some random hospital in the city. Do they even have a car? He hasn't seen one and there's no way in hell they're walking.

"The lab…" says Sherlock, his eyes flicking around. "Medicine… to ease pain. _Think._"

Sam looks to John to see if this makes sense. John takes a few deep breaths, fighting a new wave of nausea judging by the interesting shade his face has just gone.

"I trust him," he says. "If he says we should-" His mouth snaps shut and he closes his eyes, one hand reaching for the bucket, leaving the rest of the sentence to be inferred.

"We should," Sam finishes for him.

He brushes hair off his face. When Sherlock gets these episodes – and they get longer each time – he looks like he could slip into death at any moment. But he was a genius, that much was clear. Maybe he did know of some sort of medicine to help.

And even if he didn't, and his request was all mad babblings, the guy evidently had some sort of connection for the place. If he wasn't gonna survive long, they may as well oblige him.

Damn. His line of thinking had acquired a morbid turn of late. Understandably.

"How far away is it?" says Sam, trying to work out an appropriate method of maneouvring them all. "How do we get there?"

He waits as John struggles to keep his nausea at bay. "Take… taxi. Taxi. _God._"

"Now? Maybe we should wait until this… wave of – of 'fading'… is over."

"What if it's never over, Sam?" says Dean.

"Really Dean?" Sam rounds on him. "You feel like taking a cab right now? You think we can all head out and catch a cab?"

Dean looks at him through slitted eyes, and then turns his head away to a darker corner of the room with a wince.

"We're waiting," says Sam. He can feel a throbbing pain behind his temples but he ignores it, knowing Dean's experiencing something much worse. He can't afford to stop for one second. Something will happen. Something always does.

"For what?" says John, finally relinquishing the bucket. "Evening?"

Apparently this is hilarious, because Dean snorts and John is chuckling weakly. They catch each other's eye from across the room and their shoulders start shaking, overcome with mirth.

Castiel does his Squinty-Eye-Head-Tilt thing. "I don't understand what is amusing about the corruption of time causing a lack of night."

"Nothing," says Sam, though he can feel himself begin to smirk. God, he's _tired. _

"Damn, Cas-" Dean passes a hand over his eyes, collecting himself. "It's not funny."

"I don't understand."

"They're tired," says Sam. "And ill."

Castiel frowns. "This is not illness. Their souls are fading away until one of the two dies."

The laughter disappears and there's a beat of silence except for Sherlock, struggling to remain coherent and awake.

Dean sighs. "Thanks for the reminder, Cas."

"You should get money," John tells Sam. It looks like the worst of his episode is over for now – that is, he doesn't have to stop every two words to hurl. "For the taxi… in case they only accept cash. Take my credit card. On the mantelpiece." He gives him the PIN. "There's a cash machine down the street."

Sam blinks and goes over to the mantelpiece, trying to locate John's wallet.

"John," says Sherlock.

"Yes?"

"I should die."

"No-"

"Though, to be perfectly honest, I don't think I can."

"Can what?"

"Die. John," says Sherlock. "I find that… I am _old. _I can't _die, _not if you tried, not if you shot me-"

John looks weary and pained. "Sherlock. Stop. You should rest."

"Don't tell me what to do, John."

Sam finds the wallet and fiddles with it. "I can't go," he says. "What if something happens?"

"We'll call you, Sam," says Dean. "Go."

He hesitates, looking around at the dried blood and general mayhem. Castiel is standing like a statue, a sentry in the sitting-room.

"Don't _hesitate-_" Sherlock's sat up, dried tracks of red down his face, half-smeared away, glaring at him with enough force that it's a bit scary. His voice is hoarse but clearer than it was before. He looks like he's struggling to hold on to his veneer of cold reasoning. "Can't you s_ee _there's no time? Just _go!_"

Sam leaves the apartment. When he goes out the door the smell is washed away, replaced by clean air and a kind of flowery perfume residue.

When he reaches the bottom of the stairs he reaches for the handle of the front door, but it swings open before he gets it, almost knocking him against the wall. There's a rustling and a jingling of a pair of keys and another wave of rose scent hits him.

"Oh dearie me, sorry, I – _my, _someone's been in the wars, haven't they?"

Sam frowns, his sombre train of thought about fading disoriented by the appearance of Mrs Hudson clutching bags of shopping in her arms. "I, uh, sorry?"

"Just a…" Mrs Hudson performs an impressive maneouvering of bags to get the key in her front door without dropping anything. Her voice gains a different timbre as she gets further away, depositing the bags in her hallway. "There we are. What _have _you and that other detective – what was his name? – been investigating with Sherlock this time? A serial murder? Oh, no, that's alright, don't tell me the details, I can't follow all this _deduction _as he calls it."

She re-emerges and looks him up and down, and Sam could swear he hears a faint _tut_. He attempts a polite smile. "I should-"

"Dearie me," says Mrs Hudson for no apparent reason. "I don't know what's been going on, but look at the state of you! If you don't mind my saying so. _Now, _if there's one thing I've learnt in my life it's that someone looking like you – is that blood on your hands? Oh dear – is in need of a good cup of tea."

"Oh!" Sam deploys the smile again but it's having no effect. "No, it's fine, I've really got to-"

She crosses her arms. "Now I'm sure Sherlock is having you run all over the place following up his leads, working all the time. He gets quite taken away with these cases. But if you ask me – once they're dead, they'll stay dead and the answer to the crime will stay the same. Oh – you don't want to hear this, me babbling on at you. Do come in."

"Thanks, but I really should-"

"It'll only be fifteen minutes from your day. Nice to get the weight off your feet once in a while." Mrs Hudson disappears into her apartment.

Defeated, Sam follows.

He's conscious of John's credit card in his pocket and everyone upstairs. Dean could have an episode, he could be dying and the others are too weak to help, and he's waiting for Sam to get back right now and help him and-

"I'll just put the kettle on," she says.

Her apartment is full of china ornaments and souvenirs from far-flung vacations. It's tidy and manages to instil a sense of stillness while Mrs Hudson buzzes around, in her prime. "Do sit down."

He sits, on a flower-patterned armchair. There's a porcelain cat next to the TV watching him with gleaming black-paint eyes.

"Remind me," Mrs Hudson says over the sound of the kettle coming to boil. "What is it you do again?"

He tries to think back to before everything went downhill. "I… uh… we're detectives from Scotland Yard."

"I _see. _We always had that nice man Lestrade before." There's the clink of cups and saucers being removed from a cupboard. Sam can't stop fidgeting, one hand touching the credit card in his pocket.

"Yeah," he says. "He's busy. On another case. So we got called in."

"Right." Mrs Hudson reappears with a plate of shortbread cookies. Sam can't stay _still, _not _now. _"Do help yourself to a biscuit."

He is pretty hungry though. "Thanks." He reaches for a piece of shortbread, awkwardly.

"You've got blood on your sleeve, dear," she says.

"Oh! That's – it was - nosebleed – it's… not my blood-"

She appears unperturbed. "Try washing it out with a towel and some water." She gets up as the kettle reaches a boil. "You'd better not be getting blood all over the floors up there."

Sam thumbs the red patch while he waits for her to return. She comes in brandishing a tray with cups and saucers and a teapot. It's ridiculous to be doing this now.

"Is it Sherlock? Is he in trouble?" she says, with raised eyebrows to suggest that this is something that happens often.

"It's a… it's a tough case," says Sam. "Lots of stuff to do, you know. Look, I-"

"Well, if there's anyone I know who can take care of himself in a dangerous situation, it's Sherlock." Mrs Hudson pours Sam a cup of tea. The steam cascades upwards like a reverse white waterfall. "It's the everyday things he seems to forget. Do sit _down, _dear. You're not the one person keeping everything together. I always say – you can't help others if you don't help yourself. Sugar?"

"Uh, yeah." Even though he can't remember the rules of tea-drinking, or what he likes. He doesn't _care _about the rules of tea-drinking. Conversation. He needs to make conversation. (Well, no, he _needs _to get out of there, even if it means burning himself on this damn tea). "So you're the… landlady?"

Mrs Hudson gives him a Look as she hands him his cup of tea. "Oh, I think I'm a little more than that, dear."

"Oh – I didn't mean-"

"I know you didn't. Yes, I'm the landlady here. I try and keep it all nice and tidy, but of course Sherlock will _insist _on _shooting _the walls and I don't know what else, and I'm not his housekeeper."

Sam drums his fingers against the edge of the teacup, willing it to cool down. "You must get a lot of stuff going on, lots of people, with him being a detective."

"Yes. I try and stay out of the way as best I can. As long as there isn't too much blood, or too many bulletholes, I try not to interfere with the cases." She sips her tea.

For just a moment, Sam finds himself pausing, losing some of the restless energy and letting some of the exhaustion take its place. He takes a gulp of tea. Mrs Hudson must be one hell of a woman to be able to deal with John and Sherlock, because from what he gathers, Sherlock at least must be stupidly difficult to live with. He wonders if the men know that.

His thoughts are rambling, but at least he's not playing the same loop of _What if something's happened oh god can't stop what if something's happened_. He finishes the tea as quickly as he can.

"See?" says Mrs Hudson. Sam stares. "A cup of tea does wonders."

"Uh, yeah. Thanks. Listen, I really have to go. It's like a… life or death kind of thing."

She frowns in concern. "Oh _dear. _Well, I'll get out of your way, then. I hope you catch them. I know you will."

"Yeah." Sam takes another piece of shortbread because he is seriously freaking hungry, and heads towards the door. He pauses before he leaves. "Thanks though. For the tea."

"No problem, love." Mrs Hudson gives him a smile which suggests that she's used to these abrupt dismissals and departures. Probably is.

Sam leaves her apartment, and then goes out the front door, wondering what the hell just happened as he steps into the dusty warmth of what should be evening but is in fact, a day still lit up by cloudy sun.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

When Sam returns with twenty pounds in his pocket all the anxieties have resumed their spot at the forefront of his mind.

_They want us to die. _

_Compelling yourself to end your life… brilliant. _

_What if something's happened to Dean oh god what if something's happened what if Dean's killed John what if John's killed Dean what if someone's killed themselves there must be a solution there has to be there always is-_

"I've got the money for the cab," he says as he re-enters the sitting-room, struck again by the contrast of the chaos in here, as if there's been a battle, and the normality of the world outside.

"Great." Dean looks better, he's lugged himself into a chair but his voice is still low and quieter than usual. Castiel hasn't moved. John is sat by Sherlock, flicking through the time-muddled newspaper with almost imperceptibly trembling hands. "Can we go?"

"Is it safe? I mean – with Sherlock and everything-"

John puts the paper to one side. "He's the one who suggested this."

"Right," says Dean. "Because of medicines or his chemistry stuff or whatever."

The detective's watching the conversation through half-open eyes, his eyes dulled as if it interests him very little. He doesn't look like he's in any shape to be making medicinal discoveries.

Dean follows his gaze. "Yeah, I know," he says, as if he's reading Sam's mind.

"Look, I trust him," says John. "If anybody can find a way out of this, it's Sherlock."

"But it's not a way out, is it? It's just medication. Which probably won't work." Sam rolls and unrolls the twenty pound note in his hand. He doesn't know what to _do _anymore. "And how are we all meant to get into a taxi? Cas can't zap himself, and he can't get in a car with Sherlock."

"Sam, we've gotta _try_." Dean sounds as if he would be angry if he could summon up the energy. "What do you want to do? Give up?"

"No!" Sam hesitates. "We'll go then."

"Good, because if you hadn't said that I'd've found a way to get us there anyway." Dean smirks. "What about you, Cas? What will you do?"

The angel is watching Sherlock. He glances at Sam and Dean. "I'll follow."

"But what about the distance? What will happen?" Sam imagines Castiel crumpling as the car rolls further away, with the occupants unaware.

"I don't know," says Castiel. Everyone waits for him to say more, but he falls silent again. _I don't know. _Nobody knows.

"Okay," says Dean. "Alright." He looks around and Sam sees that he, too, feels helpless in the situation. "So do we go?"

Cas fixes him with the Soul-Searching-Gaze. "Yes. You shouldn't risk your life because of me."

A beat of silence.

"Damn it, Cas, I don't know." Dean rubs his temples.

John shrugs. "What have we got to lose? It's this or nothing."

"He's right," says Cas. He tilts his head in preparation for trying out a new phrase. "We have… nothing to lose."

And in the end, they decide to go.

John tries to rouse Sherlock out of his stupor and gets some degree of success, insofar as the consulting detective gets up and moves, but always very slowly, as if he's stuck in slow motion, or has aged forty years in a few days.

It's a sluggish procession out of the apartment.

Dean goes first. He doesn't say that much, which Sam puts down to his migraine…. If that's what it was. Either way, his brother's still _there _and _existing _and _alive, _which is the most important thing.

Then again, so is John.

Sam tries not to think about John dying because it fills him with hope that Dean will live, and straight after, a crushing guilt and horror that he could wish death on someone decent who was thrown into the situation against their will.

After Dean, Sam follows, and then John, who looks back every two seconds to check that Sherlock isn't about to shoot down the stairs head first. Castiel stands in the entrance of the apartment, waiting for Sherlock to get a certain way down the stairs before he follows suit.

There's silence, nobody having anything useful to offer in the situation. It's all very awkward, and Sam once again questions the point of this endeavour.

The taxi is driven by an impatient middle-aged woman with red hair and a yellowish wrinkly face. John and Sam and Dean try and look carefree as they pile in. Sam shields the bloodstains on his sleeve and John gives the driver a polite smile as he gives her the location.

"Alright, St. Barts?" The driver puts her hand on the wheel.

"Wait!" John's still holding the door open. "Sherlock?"

Sherlock is still on the sidewalk, looking unsteady on his feet but undoubtedly remaining upright. Castiel stands in the doorway to 221B. They're staring at each other from the three metre distance imposed on them and at that moment, they do seem remarkably similar.

Sam waits for some sort of deep comment to pass between them that the rest of them won't understand, but it doesn't come.

"Listen guys, I can't wait here all day." The taxi driver leans one arm on the back of her chair to observe them. "Wow, what's the matter with him? He looks like crap."

"He's just talking to that other guy, um-" John leans across the seat to call out again. "Sherlock, come on!"

The driver scoffs. "What other guy?"

There's a beat of silence. Sam glances out the window to make sure Castiel hasn't teleported away, but no, he's stood there, grim and still. "That guy right there on the doorstep."

"Yeah, you're hilarious," says the driver. She toots the horn and it seems to shake Sherlock out of his gazing reverie. He stumbles back and almost collapses into the car.

"You can…" John trails off as the car engine roars. "drive now…"

It's so cramped in the car that the apartment feels like a luxurious open area in comparison. Dean's leaning his head against the window.

Sam's in the front. He watches Sherlock in the rear view mirror. The doctor is beside him, with a hand surreptitiously on his pulse and his eyes darting around for the possible manifestation of any symptom.

_It wants to kill us…. A Battle Royale scenario…. Compelling yourself to end your life…. Brilliant. It wants to kill us… It's called the fading. _

The thoughts spin around in his mind of their own accord, settling into a strange sort of rhythm. He ignores them, focusing on the rumble of the engine. Dean must be pining for the Impala.

"Dean, you alright?" says Sam, prepared for any comments regarding the feminisation of his name.

Dean doesn't lift his head from the window. The streets of London flash past behind him. "Crash," he says.

"What?"

"Let the car… crash."

"What's the matter with him?" says the driver, glancing in the rear view mirror. "You all sick or something?"

"Migraine," says Sam. John nudges Dean in the backseat, obviously trying to gauge if this is the beginning of another crap-timed episode. "He gets migraines."

"That sucks. Must be a bloody bad one if you're going to the hospital."

"Go faster," mutters Dean. "Put your foot down. _Crash._"

Sam's heart is pounding. What if Dean tries to kill himself like Sherlock did? What if he opens the door and jumps into the road?

He attempts a fake laugh. "Shut up, it's not that bad." He raises his eyebrows at the driver. "He gets melodramatic."

Glancing back, Sam scans the three faces in the backseat. Dean looks grim but coherent _(the chaos simmers inside)_, and John's got a grip on the underside of his sleeve, evidently having following the same train of thought as Sam.

His other hand still lies on Sherlock's wrist, keeping track of his pulse. The detective is silent, as usual. Sam's pretty glad he's not screaming or freaking out but if anything the lack of response is even more disturbing. Where was Castiel? Was he okay?

John doesn't look too good himself, pale and sweating. He flashes Sam an expression that somehow conveys reassurance and anxiety at the same time.

"Are we close?"

The driver has apparently picked up on the unnatural sense of urgency in the car. "Yeah. Don't worry."

Not long after, the car pulls to a halt outside a grand three storey building with Georgian architecture, and it doesn't feel to Sam like a hospital at all. "Here we are."

They all start filtering out, in a bizarrely normal fashion for such a screwed-up situation. Sam almost forgets to pay the driver.

When Dean gets out he pauses and blinks several times. "What the _hell_?"

"You okay, Dean?" says Sam.

"I don't –" Dean reaches a hand to his head and stares around at the road. "I don't remember getting here."

Sam says nothing. There's nothing he can say. His head hurts too, and he's getting hit with the weirdest kind of jetlag because it's about nine and yeah, the sun's still shining behind the cloud cover like there's no tomorrow. (_Maybe there isn't)._

There's no sign of the trenchcoat-clad angel anywhere. "Should we wait for Cas?"

Sherlock, to Sam's surprise, is still standing and relatively okay, though he doesn't say much and sometimes will stop apropos of nothing, and seem to forget to do… anything, until John prompts him to move.

"We don't even know if he's coming," says John in a generally unhelpful way.

They all stare down the road, at the lethargic bright-night movement of people with their bags and suitcases, and the cars, and the sounds carried from streets further away, as if they'll miraculously see Castiel walking towards them, stoic and surviving, like he always does.

He doesn't.

Dean swallows and turns to Sherlock. "You can't sense him or anything, can you? With your freaky connection thing?"

Sherlock just stares off, shakes his head. He barely moves.

"Dean," says Sam. "I don't think he even heard the question. Let's just-"

His attempt to move the group into the hospital are ignored, though he can see John is also waiting by the entrance to the hospital.

"He's fine though," says Dean, indicating Sherlock. "Look at him! He's fine. He shouldn't be, right? You said he'd get worse. What does that mean? Huh? What does that _mean_?" He cuts himself off, sounding unusually worked up for Dean.

"I don't know, Dean!" Sam pulls him out of the way of a passerby when his brother doesn't seem to notice them. "Nobody knows, okay? Let's just get in that hospital and see if Sherlock can do whatever he thinks…. You have a fever."

"Stop sounding so damn surprised, Sam." Dean pushes Sam's hand away from his forehead and follows John and Sherlock into the hospital.

It appears the other pair know the place well, because John leads them up one flight of stairs, pausing every two steps to prompt Sherlock along. They reach the next floor, the bottom of the next staircase.

"Is it here?" says Sam. He glances at Dean and forces a hand on his forehead, despite the face his brother makes. "You're seriously burning up, Dean."

John shakes his head. "Next floor. And along."

And that's when the doctor decides to pass out cold on the plastic white floor. Sam's not even that startled – he should _know _the signs by now, that when one is affected, so is the other, but still he forgets.

"John," says Sherlock. It's the first thing he's said for some time.

Sam swears. "Help me – we'll use the elevator." The elevator doors are beside the staircase. He tries to pick John up without looking too much like somebody smuggling a body.

Instead of helping, Dean just kind of smirks. "Sorry."

"What? For what?"

He stares at the unconscious John Watson. "That's me. This is because of me." He shakes his head.

"Yeah," says Sam, who is getting royally tired of this game. "Are you going to help me? Or – would you get in the elevator? You too, Sherlock."

He ends up lugging John into the elevator and propping him up against the wall. Sherlock and Dean cram in after him. Sam jabs the button and the doors slide shut.

Having regained the use of his vocal cords (in fact, the consulting detective has made a remarkable recovery considering he was catatonic on a couch hours ago, and Sam wonders what that means for Castiel), Sherlock glares at Dean. "You're _killing him._"

"You hadn't picked up on that?" Dean nods his head in a curt acknowledgement. "I know."

Sherlock takes a step closer to Dean, which in the elevator is not that far, so Sam's brother is forced to meet the other man's eyes, uncomfortably close.

"Do you really think you're worth him?" says Sherlock. "Do you think your life is worth _John?_"

Dean says nothing as the doors slide open. Sam goes first, dragging John and wincing when the doctor's legs get caught around the edge of the door.

He stands up, taking a few deep breaths, because that man is _not_ a lightweight, and as Sherlock passes him, Sam grabs his shoulder. "Dean's worth a whole lot _more _than that." He tries to keep his voice quiet but Dean's eyes flicker over to him anyway.

Sherlock brushes him off, eyes once more getting that sheen that indicated his mind had… done whatever happens when he gets like that. Turned in on itself, in a way. Sam doesn't even know if he heard him as the detective leads them down corridors, pausing at the end of each stretch to let Sam lug John along.

They arrive at a room that reveals itself to be a science lab of some kind, in a separate section from the main part of the hospital. There's bunsen burners and vials and petri dishes and microscopes. All the walls and the ceiling and the floor and the counters are clean plastic white.

Sam deposits John by the door. He's waking up as Sherlock goes and sits himself on one of the stools, much like he did in the kitchen at his apartment.

"Are you alright?" says Sam, kind of woodenly.

John feels his head and stares around at the room for a bit, his gaze settling on his flatmate setting up equipment at the counter.

"God," he says. He grins for some reason, and winces, but he still seems to be finding something very funny.

"John?"

John coughs. Perhaps he's delirious, but he sounds coherent. "It's like… we've gone back to the beginning."

That doesn't make any discernible sense to Sam, but the side of Sherlock's mouth curls upwards a little bit, though he makes no other reaction to anything said.

Dean pulls up a stool. "Okay, well, we're here. You're gonna do your science thing now, right? Sherlock?"

Sherlock is arranging vials next to each other in a neat row, the glass clinking as the bases get pushed together. Whatever he's doing, it's not a scientific investigation. Sam's not sure his mind is really still there at all.

"Okay," says Dean wearily. "Alright."

Sam turns to John. "Is anybody going to come in here?"

"Maybe. I doubt it." He frowns. "If they do, we can go onto the roof. It's out that door, up the steps. There's a cover."

How the four – five once Castiel gets there, because he _will - _of them would get up the steps remains to be seen. What if one of them can't walk? Sam's arms still burn from dragging John all that way.

"Didn't you notice?" says Sherlock, not speaking to them as much as to some invisible presence across from the table. "The hospital is empty."

"You mean we're the only ones here?" says Dean. Sam realises that he's right. Nobody stopped them at the front desk, nobody was in the corridors, nobody anywhere.

"The hospital is empty."

Losing coherency once again, Sherlock resumes his muttering and moving the objects around him to slightly different places.

Dean groans and puts his head down on the counter, hands on his head.

Despite having spent _days _(if the concept even exists anymore, in this screwed-up universe) dealing with a litany of symptoms, it still only takes a slight movement from his brother for Sam to be filled with unstoppable alarm.

"Dean?" he says. "Are you alright?"

There's a muffled curse.

"No, Sam." Sam can see that Dean has his eyes tight shut in pain. "_No._"


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N Love getting your reviews, they are very much appreciated. Seriously though, they're great. _

* * *

The rest is a blur, really. One long haze which Sam can't easily divide into hours or days, just the endless beating of sunlight through the blinds as things fall apart.

Nobody comes into the lab. Nobody leaves it, either. They all just… settle, occasionally getting up to settle in a different place in the room, moments of clarity interspered with nothing.

_It's called the fading. _

_They want you to die. _

It was a mistake to come here. They're not gaining anything. Sherlock doesn't seem capable of any great universe-cleaving discoveries.

Soon after they arrive (but how soon, Sam couldn't say), he finds himself standing at the window, lifting the plastic shutters of the blinds and staring out at the enormity of London city. Somewhere, something is burning, a light brighter and whiter than the others flaring from a distant spot among the network of roads.

Sam thinks it might be Castiel.

"You see anything?" says Dean, and by 'anything' he means _Cas. _

Dropping the shutters, Sam shakes his head. "No."

They both glance at the consulting detective.

"We shouldn't have come," says Dean, but he sounds too tired to make a huge deal out of it. It's not like anybody disagrees either. "What time is it?"

The phone says _10:17PM. _

"Is the time right?" Sam muses out loud.

Sherlock doesn't look up from his microscope. He's excavated the many drawers and has taken one thing from each: a scalpel, some spatulas, a knife. "Is there such a thing as time anymore?"

"Why don't you shut up?" says Dean. He slides from his stool and staggers to to the side before catching himself and gaining his equilibrium.

"Dean." Sam steps away from the window.

"What? He hasn't done anything." He lowers his voice with a look towards John, who has dozed off on the floor. He turns to Sherlock. "You're not even doing anything. Do you even have anything to go on? Do you have a _clue?"_

"There is no solution," says Sherlock simply.

"Oh, don't give me that," says Dean. "There must be-" His voice catches. "There's gotta be a way. Haven't I been saying that all along?"

Sherlock's eyes look dull. "You're wrong."

"_You_ could be wrong!" Dean rubs his temples. Sam wishes he would sit down. He still has a fever. The shivering is visible from across the room."I could be _dying._"

"Dean," says Sam.

"On the contrary," says Sherlock. Sweat makes strands of hair stick to his forehead, though his voice is even. He looks at his pale flatmate on the ground and his eyes flash with something like sadness. "You are the one who is killing John."

"Yeah? Well, because of you, Cas might already be _dead!_" Sam jumps as Dean slams the wall with his hand. There's not much force in it but the reverbrating crash jerks John awake. He rubs his face and yawns.

Sherlock looks back down, fiddling with the microscope settings. "If he was dead, I would have felt it. We are all in danger here, and you would do well to remember that when it comes to who lives and who dies, I would _prefer…_"

He trails off as he catches a look at John's face warning him to shut up.

"Not good?" says Sherlock.

John sighs. "Bit not good, yeah."

"Prefer what?" Dean's using one hand against the wall to keep himself upright. Sam hovers near him in case he falls.

The detective makes a face at his apparent idiocy. "You know what."

Dean scoffs. "Yeah, I do."

"Can you really not do anything, Sherlock?" says John. "You have to _try._"

The detective stares around, his face like marble, and yet something about the expression is very close to breaking. "I can't," he says.

A fragile silence. "Can't you even try?"

"I can't."

There's a low frustration in that tone which suggests to Sam that Sherlock is being held back by more than his own physical weakness.

Dean kind of half-collapses into the floor, leaning against the wall, and looks up towards the white ceiling. "Cas, you son of a bitch, where are you?"

* * *

A while later, Dean says "You could kill me, right?"

"Hmm?" John looks up, his head having lolled forward into a half-doze. It feels like the middle of the night but Sam can't block the shine from the windows.

"What would be the purpose of that?" says Sherlock.

"Well," says Dean, meeting Sherlock's eyes. "Saves John. And the whole fixing the universe thing. You could, right now. Couldn't you?"

"Yes."

"So kill me." He doesn't sound frantically insistent like Sherlock did, just like he's opening up the subject for casual debate.

John and Sam exchange a look. _An episode? _

"Dean, this isn't you," says Sam. "Stop saying that."

"No, I'm asking." Dean sits up a bit. "Why don't you, if you want John to live so much?"

John leans his head back with a sigh and shuts his eyes, as if the words pain him to hear. "Oh god, don't… don't-"

Sherlock looks at Dean, and at John.

"There is no difference," he says cryptically.

"Right. Well, glad we got that cleared up." Dean sighs. "Unless you want me to kill myself? Jump out the window?"

Sam's insides are all in knots. _"Dean." _

"Oh," says John. "Don't trouble yourself on my account."

There's a pause and then, for some reason, him and Dean start laughing. Weary, quiet laughter. Sam can't understand it because if there's one thing that's not the slightest bit funny it's his brother talking about _killing himself, _but it seems that John and Dean have developed a sort of macabre humour about the matter. Some effect of the 'soul connection' maybe.

John's amusement fades to a mild smile. "Don't. You won't, will you?"

"No." Dean smirks. "Tough luck."

Sam can feel that they've slipped into their Dean-John…. Whatever it is. Connection. Bubble. Mindwarp. Listening to them feels like an invasion of privacy, but it's not really easy to block them out, being the only source of sound in the room.

"Hey, don't say that," says John. When he laughs it comes out raspy. "I don't want you to die."

Sam goes back to the window and watches the shifting of the clouds. He thinks Dean might be delirious and it goes against all his instincts not to help. Not that he _can_ help, anymore, and that's the most painful thing.

Dean chuckles, and there's silence for a while.

Then he says "I should apologise. If you die."

John waves a half-hearted hand of dismissal. "No hard feelings."

Sam feels an abrupt choking in his throat and he swallows it down. They sound like they're saying goodbye, and Sam can absolutely _not _acceptthis end.

"Sherlock," he says. His voice comes out as a broken whisper. He clears his throat. "Sherlock."

The detective's eyes flicker towards him. His eyes are full of pain though his face remains impassive.

"Can't you do – anything?" says Sam, moving closer so that Dean won't hear him.

"Still think you're a nutter," John's telling Dean. They look like two men drunk or exhausted _(or dying) _wiling away the hours, the only thing amiss being the clean white surroundings.

Sherlock's eyes turn away from Sam, glancing towards the window where something is burning in the distance. He doesn't say anything but Sam knows it's only because he's said it before. _No._

"But for the record," John continues. "Sorry if you die. Because of me."

It's an odd mix of apparent amusement that the pair of them have developed, and the relentless frustration – desperation - of a fate that seems inescapable.

Sam's mind is misted with lethargy and a pounding headache, but he won't go to sleep. Not while it's still daytime (and it is still daytime, has been for days, it's 10:48PM but the sun is shining and that's what matters), and not while something could still _happen._

Dean's eyes are half-shut. He's burning up, burning out. "You reckon they've got beer here?" he says to the room in general.

"Go to sleep, Dean," says Sam. "You have a fever."

"Shut up. _You _go to sleep."

Sam smirks a bit. He waits.

* * *

Later, one by one, they slip into sleep.

The phone says _11:37PM _when Sherlock slumps forward at the counter, knocking the side of his head on a tripod. It happens so suddenly that for a second Sam thinks he's gone, that's it, Castiel is alive and Sherlock is dead, but the slightly delayed rise and fall of his shoulders indicate otherwise.

"Sh… lock-" John struggles to get up to go and check on him, not able to see him breathing from his slanted viewpoint of the floor, but he exhausts himself with the movement and the energy drain leaves him flopped against the counter, nearer to Sherlock's stool than to Sherlock.

At some point he falls into a point so near unconsciousness that he's neither awake nor asleep, but somewhere between the two, eyelids flickering at occasional sounds.

Dean's asleep. Sam goes over to him and arranges himself on the floor in front of him. He doesn't want to look away in case his brother chooses that moment to just… _fade. _

He's really sick of that word. 'Fade.' _Really damn sick _of it.

It's almost like night-time, the quiet atmosphere… except for it being day at quarter to midnight and all.

He jumps as a voice says "Quit staring at me, man." Dean opens one eye to squint at Sam, and then the other as his vision adjusts to the light.

"Dean! You should be asleep," says Sam, and then automatically "What's your name?"

The hunter raises an eyebrow. "Shut up."

"I have to check. What's my name?"

"I'm not going to forget my own name. I'm not going to forget you either, _Sam._"

Sam realises, somewhat belatedly, that they forgot the sheets of memory trigger words. Guess their feeble attempts at preparation were pretty crappy anyway – a bunch of words wouldn't heal a universe.

He puts a hand to Dean's forehead. Dean doesn't stop him. "You're burning. I've never felt a fever this high."

Dean squints at him. "Whoopee for me."

His voice is so weak, a mockery of his past strength and confidence.

"You should really sleep, Dean."

Dean makes a face. "Yeah, well, I don't want to."

There's a pause.

"I don't want you to," says Sam quietly, glancing from Dean to the plastic floor and to his hands. _In case you don't wake up. _

After a few seconds of observing him, Dean says "What, you get bored without me here to entertain you?" He groans and closes his eyes. "Might have to get used to it."

Sam winces. "Dean, we're gonna fix this. So just shut up, alright? You're delirious."

He ignores the look his brother sends him. The glaring is kind of undermined by the way Dean has to stop to try and hack his lungs up. His body seizes up in a coughing fit and when he draws his hand away from his mouth, there's flecks of blood.

Dean peers at the glistening spots. "Well, that can't be good," he says.

"Oh-" Sam stumbles to his feet. "I'll just – stay still, I'll get…."

Dean flings an arm out and reaches up towards him. "Sam." He gestures down. "Sit."

"Don't be stupid, you're ill-"

"Then it's my dying wish for you to _sit the hell down._" His brother's voice is raw with the effort of pumping command into his tone. John stirs and Dean glances at him. His expression is, briefly, full of concern. "What are you gonna do, anyway?"

"Find a towel…"

Dean's head suddenly lolls back against the wall. He goes limp. In a flash, Sam has all but thrown himself on the floor, kneeling in front of Dean, saying his name over and over.

His brother opens his eyes and there's a glimmer of a smirk on his lips. "Gotcha."

"What..?" Sam feels like he's choking. "That's not _funny, _Dean. _Don't _do that."

"That's my _point._" Dean's got a grip on Sam's arm, presumably so his brother can't escape again to try and help him.

"What do you-"

Taking a rasping lungful of air, Dean says "I'm not gonna _fade. _Get this into your oversized head, 'kay? I don't plan on just… dying because two universes decided to get comfy with each other, or whatever the hell this is. It's not on the cards, okay? I wanna die doing something… _awesome. _And this _sucks._"

His gaze trails over to John, lying prone at Sherlock's feet, and the detective passed out on the counter above him.

"Gotta say though," Dean continues. He is drenched in sweat. "Not like you can't manage without me."

"Dean, shut up."

"No, I'm serious. Without me, you'd have the life you wanted. Where people are just normal people, and not demons and witches or some other monster. Would just suck that… I'm not there to see it happen."

His voice gets fainter. His eyes are glassy, losing and gaining focus erratically.

"That's… that's a load of crap, Dean," says Sam, as he gets up. _A normal life would be nothing if you weren't in it. _"You're delirious. Go to sleep already."

His brother is spent, obviously, because for once in his life he does what Sam says and leans his head back with a groan. Soon his breathing becomes even (_and shallow, shuddering, surviving_).

Sam scoots over to a point on the wall beside and tries to make himself comfortable against the solid cabinet, the handle digging into his back. Without really meaning to, he finds himself sinking, drifting, and then… asleep.

* * *

Sometime during the night-time (or more accurately, extended daytime) Sam is dragged into a half-awake state.

He is aware, dimly, of the hard ground and the hard cabinet against his back and his numb leg and two voices, whispering.

He cracks open an eyelid, and everything's blurred. He follows the outlines of movement without really taking in what he's hearing and seeing.

Sherlock's awake, the dark form of his clothes and head rising from the counter and muttering ceaselessly, as per usual.

"It doesn't work, it won't work, it doesn't make sense, no sense, there's no sense in it, why now? Why now? Why now?" He tries to rise, placing his hands on the counter, and fails. His legs buckle and he ends up clinging to the side of the stool.

Sam becomes aware of a second person awake. John, still on the ground, one hand weakly pushed out towards Sherlock, in a kind of pathetic attempt to stop the other man falling. "Sherlock."

"John, it won't work. Nothing does."

Sherlock's kind of collapsing beside John, folding up. The legs of the stool squeal as he lets go of it and it gets pushed back. His hair is a mess. He is a mess. "Sherlock, it's okay, it's alright."

A pause. "I know everything, John. It won't work though. I don't know why."

John keeps going 'shhh' as if he's calming a child, but it comes out as more of a hiss.

"I can fly, John."

"Sherlock-" A rustle as John struggles to move, and gives up. "Don't. Don't talk."

Silence.

Sam goes back to sleep.


End file.
